Blunder & Bluff

I don't know what you're doing here. I don't even know what I'm doing here.

[ivanpahdrylakeracer]

keep seeing Temu ads on here so just to share cause idk if people are widely aware

[squid-girl]

I think this is my favorite post on the Internet right about now! Edit: And I just needed to Edit this Photo 4 TIMES till it worked here… #youarewelcome #tumblrnoob #learnhowtotumblr

[notajerusalemcricketd-deactivat]

[wario-land]

A family

[delmondo]

Op op op op. Oppenheimer style

heyyyyyy I'm become death

[osmanthusoolong]

It’s been an interesting experience watching ideas like “tone policing” and “punching up/down” get pruned and espaliered from “hey, dismissing someone you were clearly not going to listen to in the first place for not expressing pain cheerfully and politely is obviously disingenuous” and “it’s probably worth being aware of who holds the social power in a given context when you’re making jokes about other people” respectively, into “I absolutely have the right, no, obligation to talk to anyone however I want, and if they flinch it’s violence against me” and “I treat every social interaction like it’s on Pokémon rules, where this is strong against that, and I can’t hurt anyone because I’m weak against them”.

[tobermoriansass]

#extremely important to realize that many people who claim to have anti-oppression politics are not actually interested#in dismantling systems of structural oppression#what they are very interested in is finding ways to be openly cruel to people while still thinking of themselves as a good person#and having others think of them as a good person#because The Rules say that these are the people who it is acceptable to hurt (via brotheralyosha)

[abalidoth]

Just woke up from a dream where one of my Tumblr mutuals taught me about an image processing transform called the "communist transform" that was... apparently part of some specific open source movement to track changes in DRM'ed media?

and I pulled out a whiteboard and fucking worked through a 4x4 example by hand

I think my brain is broken

[abalidoth]

@medium-amount-of-gay asked for more context, so: this is the code for the Communist Transform (it's basically a five-point estimation of Gaussian curvature?)

and here's what it actually looks like (on a picture of Karl Marx for thematic coherency)

I have no idea what it has to do with communism, or open source software, or anything, but that's dream logic for you. I'm just kind of amazed that something someone told me in a dream was mathematically coherent enough to code it at all.

[abalidoth]

Oh, it's really sensitive to pixel-level noise. I blurred the original image and it's a lot clearer what's going on -- it's an edge detector.

[machine-saint]

you see, this is the communist transform because the low signal represents the proletariat and the high signal represents the bourgeoisie, and therefore

[abalidoth]

...the funny thing is, you were the mutual who taught me this in my dream

[notbecauseofvictories]

Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

[mushfromnewsies]

y'know say what you want about tumblr (and I have), but this is still probably the simplest and most powerful distillation of the heart of the Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I think back to it all the time

[chaser]

This site toppling the competition by opting to sell shoelaces instead of monetising their users must be one of the greatest examples of failing upwards in history

[sadclowncentral]

for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test - the “question only a human can answer” which would stump the computer pretending to be one - would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.

luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and it’s this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.

if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?

[sadclowncentral]

[twistcmyk]

difficult

[mulberry-moons]

I assumed there was a market for bug art but I don't know what gave me that idea

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

Duquesne University has a guide on Dracula

University of Northern Iowa: Monsters and Religion

Fontbonne University has a particularly good one on Monsters, Ghosts, and Mysteries

Washington University in St. Louis: a course guide on Monsters and Strangeness 

How about poverty? 

Michigan State: Poverty and Inequality with great recommended terms and links to datasets 

Notre Dame: a multimedia guide on Poverty Studies.

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

UNC Chapel Hill: Food and Nutrition through the 20th Century (with a whole section on race, gender, and class)

Brown University: Primary Sources for History of Health in the Americas

Duke University: Ad*Access, a digital collection of advertisements from the early 20th century, with a section on beauty and hygiene  

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

[thoughshebebutlittle1]

This is…amazing. I am angry that I didn’t know about this until now. Now I can ~academically~ indulge my fascination with the 1918 flu pandemic? When I have organic chem homework and a lab report due tomorrow? I both love this and hate this.

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

I have terrible news. 

At a quick glance, Christopher Newport University, Goodwin College, and Harford Community College all have libguides on the 1918 flu pandemic. 

[diebrarian]

LibGuides are magic.

(also let us know if you find dead links, we can fix them!)

[librariandragon]

An even better way to search for libguides?

https://community.libguides.com

Use the libguide community site and search by topic, institution, or even your friendly neighborhood librarian! (If you have a librarian or two who you trust to put you on the right path, you might be able to get that guidance even if you don’t have time to reach out directly!) If their site says “LibGuide” it’ll show up in THAT community somewhere!

Looking to see what books are being used in a particular class in a particular university? Course specific libguides usually have those!

Interested in browsing until you find something that catches your attention? Springshare (the vendor that manages LibGuides) curates lists of interesting, amusing, and innovative libguides! (Okay some of these are boring because they’re geared towards UX and data visualization for librarians, but still…)

Interested in seeing the stuff that YOUR local or institutional librarians are trying to promote? Looking for ways to make the most of the resources that are freely available to you just down the road? Libraries from Atlantic City to Saratoga Springs to South Australia are making guides for their various resources, which describe everything from how to search databases to how to read call numbers to how to access online resources like e-books and video subscriptions!

Even major institutions like the New York Public Library have guides, on everything from genealogy to the history of New York neighborhoods!

[page-three-hundred-and-94]

Someone just fucking drew Gandalf in a suede chair, nbd.

[ohcarararara]

or someone has the weirdest ass ever

[bluebombardier]

Summer is hot sidewalks and road construction, the acrid stink of new asphalt, buzz and hum of air conditioning, the welcoming waft of grilled meats in someone’s backyard, cool pools of temptation, and through it all, the growth and beauty in every crack and cranny, quiet and sure as sunlight dappling in breezy trees . Still here, still struggling, but breaking ground and reaching towards that light https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfm1RtEuszG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bluebombardier]

Weather is cooling down for a few days so of course this means I’m making obnoxious knitting plans. #malabrigo #newYarn #neon #knitting #superwash https://www.instagram.com/p/CQyhPxbMPre/?utm_medium=tumblr

[bluebombardier]

Happy Solstice! Hello Summer! #strawberries #tequila #fruitInfusion https://www.instagram.com/p/CQXEgfIs22f/?utm_medium=tumblr

[thebeautifuldaughter]

inej ghafa lives a largely hopeless, violent life and turns into a creature of blades and shadows in order to navigate it but abstains from murder in the hopes of achieving some semblance of holiness, as if her faith could offer her some reprieve from the filth she's been forced to live in, as if her family dead or living could feel her devotion and be called to it, and she was born to hold knives but hates it about herself because it opposes everything she believes in, and the most important person in her life currently is a man who represents absolute and utter faithless brutality which she fights against despite her bond with him because she refuses even to let kaz brekker make her something she doesn't want to be. but then he's in danger with no way out, and the only way to save him is to bury a knife in someone's skull in a church, a direct collision of faith and reality, and the guilt torments her. how will she reckon with her sin? how will the saints ever forgive her? what hope of redemption now does she have from a life that she didn't choose? and then she sits down next to a living saint, who is whispered to be a woman of purity and sunlight, who is the opposite of inej's grime and shadows. and the saint smiles and gives her a knife.

[mrspider-deactivated20221213]

i think the muppets should preform the passion of the christ but as theyre nailing muppet jesus to the cross it makes squeaky toy noises and theyre using rubber mallets