¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @dragonmoon2995 - Tumblr Blog

my goal for 2025 is small simple and clear: change my whole entire life

the most disorienting thing thats ever happened to me was when a linguistics major stopped in the middle of our conversation, looked me in the eye, and said, "you have a very interesting vernacular. were you on tumblr in 2014?" and i had to just stand there and process that one for a good ten seconds

booksandchainmail

#i was in a car with a linguist i had never met before the car trip and like half an hour in he looked at me#after i finished describing a geology thing that was happening out the window and asked if i'd ever spent much time on tumblr#the fuckor of it all#and then we spent six more hours driving#it sure does leave linguistic markers! i'm not sure i'm good with it (tags via @thoughtsformtheuniverse)

issela-santina

it is one thing to be a linguist and another to be a linguist who knows enough of 2010s Tumblr to spot one of its enjoyers

lierdumoa

Oh! @meret118 see above comment! The use of the word "enjoyers" instead of "users" or "bloggers" -> You left a comment a while back asking, "Does this just mean vocabulary words? Other than blorbo and sweet cinnamon roll etc, I can't think of what a Tumblr accent would be." I almost never see anyone use the word "enjoyer" anywhere outside of tumblr, but I see it on tumblr fairly frequently.

Another one is the verb "perceive" i.e. "don't perceive me" "I am perceiving" "I am being percieved." That's something that feels very specific to tumblr parlance.

There's the thing where people on tumblr have an emotional reaction to something and instead of, or in addition to telling you how they feel about it using emotion words, they will narrate a fictional action in the present progressive tense. "I am gnawing at the bars of my enclosure "I am kissing you on the mouth" "you are going into the soup" "you are getting all of the awards"

I once saw someone use that response format in ... I think it was a restaurant review, or a doordash review, or something like that. It was very unexpected seeing it outside of a tumblr post.

There are a lot of other tumblr linguistic quirks I can't currently remember off the top of my head, but I'll instantly recognize them if I see/hear them outside of tumblr. It's always a bit startling to see them out of context.

porcupine-girl

What’s really startling is when you use one, thinking it’s a general internet thing, only to quickly realize that it is not.

On my podcast I said something to the effect of “and he already murdered someone about it” and my sister/cohost absolutely lost it. She thought it was hilarious. I was like… oh. I guess they do not say that over on Reddit and Facebook where you hang out. Huh.

convolutedblasphemy

The best way I can describe to an allo person how you feel about sex as a topic as a sex-repulsed or averse asexual is that it feels like a hype that never ends. As though Despicable Me came out and everyone around you was sending minion facebook memes to each other for years to come. The stores are full of minion themed products; they're in ads and your friends talk about them all the time. And deep in your heart you're like "I'm glad that they're able to enjoy something I personally don't like and am not interested in :3". But there is always this little voice in the back of your head that's like "If I have to see ONE MORE of these little yellow FUCKERS today then God help us all." You make an active choice to communicate only the former.

germaerobics

too good to leave in the replies

bruntalism

we won

hellsitegenetics

String identified: ag A at t t a g a ag ct t ag at, at, t, a ga ag ct a tt g atc ctg

Closest match: Bombus pratorum genome assembly, chromosome: 14 Common name: Early Bumblebee

(image source)

skywalkerchick1138

fozmeadows

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Years ago now, I remember seeing the rape prevention advice so frequently given to young women - things like dressing sensibly, not going out late, never being alone, always watching your drink - reframed as meaning, essentially, "make sure he rapes the other girl." This struck a powerful chord with me, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: that telling someone how to lower their own chances of victimhood doesn't stop perpetrators from existing. Instead, it treats the existence of perpetrators as a foregone conclusion, such that the only thing anyone can do is try, by their own actions, to be a less appealing or more difficult victim.

And the thing is, ever since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I've kept on thinking about how, in this day and age, CEOs of big companies often have an equal or greater impact on the day to day lives of regular people than our elected officials, and yet we have almost no legal way to redress any grievances against them - even when their actions, as in the case of Thompson's stewardship of UHC, arguably see them perpetrating manslaughter at scale through tactics like claims denial. That this is a real, recurring thing that happens makes the American healthcare insurance industry a particularly pernicious example, but it's far from being the only one. Because the original premise of the free market - the idea that we effectively "vote" for or against businesses with our dollars, thereby causing them to sink or swim on their individual merits - is utterly broken, and has been for decades, assuming it was ever true at all. In this age of megacorporations and global supply chains, the vast majority of people are dependent on corporations for necessities such as gas, electricity, internet access, water, food, housing and medical care, which means the consumer base is, to all intents and purposes, a captive market. We might not have to buy a specific brand, but we have to buy a brand, and as businesses are constantly competing with one another to bring in profits, not just for the company and its workers, but for C-suites and shareholders - profits that increasingly come at the expense of workers and consumers alike - the greediest, most inhumane corporations set the financial yardstick against which all others are then, of necessity, measured. Which means that, while businesses are not obliged to be greedy and inhumane in order to exist, overwhelmingly, they become greedy and humane in order to compete, because capitalism encourages it, and because there are precious few legal restrictions to stop them from doing so. At the same time, a handful of megacorporations own so many market-dominating brands that, without both significant personal wealth and the time and resources to find viable alternatives, it's all but impossible to avoid them, while the ubiquity of the global supply chain means that, even if you can keep track of which company owns which brand, it's much, much harder to establish which suppliers provide the components that are used in the products bearing their labels. Consider, for instance, how many mainstream American brands are functionally run on sweatshop labour in other parts of the world: places where these big corporations have outsourced their workforce to skirt the already minimal labour and wage protections they'd be obliged to adhere to in the US, all to produce (say) electronics whose elevated sticker price passes a profit on to the company, but without resulting in higher wages for either the sweatshop workers overseas or the American employees selling the products in branded US stores.

When basically every major electronics corporation is engaged in similar business practices, there is no "vote" our money can bring that causes the industry itself to be better regulated - and as wealthy, powerful lobbyists from these industries continue to pay exorbitant sums of money to politicians to keep government regulation at a minimum, even our actual votes can do little to effect any sort of change. But even in those rare instances where new regulations are passed, for multinational corporations, laws passed in one country overwhelmingly don't prevent them from acting abusively overseas, exploiting more desperate populations and cash-poor governments to the same greedy, inhumane ends. And where the ultimate legal penalty for proven transgressions is, more often than not, a fine - which is to say, a fee; which is to say, an amount which, while astronomical by the standards of regular people, still frequently costs the company less than the profits earned through their unethical practices, and which is paid from corporate coffers rather than the bank accounts of the CEOs who made the decisions - big corporations are, in essence, free to act as badly as they can afford to; which is to say, very. Contrary to the promise of the free market, therefore, we as consumers cannot meaningfully "vote" with our dollars in a way that causes "good" businesses to rise to the top, because everything is too interconnected. Our choices under global capitalism are meaningless, because there is no other system we can financially support that stands in opposition to it, and while there are still small businesses and companies who try to operate ethically, both their comparative smallness and their interdependent reliance on the global supply chain means that, even if we feel better about our choices, we're not exerting any meaningful pressure on the system we're trying to change. Which means that, under the free market, trying to be an ethical consumer is functionally equivalent to a young woman dressing modestly, not going out alone and minding her drink at parties in order to avoid being raped. We're not preventing corporate predation or sending a message to corporate predators: we're just making sure they screw other worker, the other consumer, the other guy.

All of which is to say: while I'd prefer not to live in a world where shooting someone dead in the street is considered a valid means of redressing grievances, what the murder of Brian Thompson has shown is that, if you provide no meaningful recourse for justice against abusive, exploitative members of the 1%, then violence done to those people will have the feel of justice, because it fills the void left by the lack of consequences for their actions. It's the same reason why people had little sympathy for the jackass OceanGate CEO who killed himself in his imploding sub, or anyone whose yacht has been attacked by orcas - it's just intensified here, because where the OceanGate CEO was felled by hubris and the yachts were random casualties, whoever killed Thomspon did so deliberately, because of what he did. It was direct action against a man whose policies very arguably constituted manslaughter at scale; a crime which ought to be a crime, but which has, to date, been permitted under the law. And if the law wouldn't stop him, can anyone be surprised that someone might act outside the law in retaliation - or that regular people would cheer for them when they did?

theinstagrahame

As many people who've tried to excise Amazon from their spending habits have found, it's next to impossible. Like, sure you can simply not shop on their website or at Whole Foods, but there's still a significant chunk of the Internet running on their cloud. It's the holidays right now, and I still have family members who insist on giving and receiving gift cards from Amazon (even when you ask for anything else). That's also before you go searching for something that your local stores don't have, and you can't really find anywhere else but Bezos' General Store.

Sure, they're the worst example. But thanks to corporate mergers and buyouts and general consolidation, it's true for everything. Most foods you get are owned by like one of three companies. The US has 6 major airlines and effectively no other long range travel options (because our trains are so underfunded).

So, yeah, voting with your wallet means nothing when you have to make exceptions constantly. I can't boycott something if I'm constantly breaking my boycott just to survive.

So when someone takes direct action, and it works, I think that's the reason the trial of the Suspected Assassin is becoming such a show of force. United may be going all "we don't negotiate with terrorists", but Blue Cross reversing their inhumane policies a day later sure makes it sound like it's a viable option.

And if CEOs don't want to leave is any other choices...

fozmeadows

This is a sidebar from my original point, but the mention of Amazon and its ubiquity makes me want to add on a theory of mine about why I think Amazon has been able to get such an insane foothold in the US market. Because the thing is, while Amazon originates in the US, it's now a global company - and yet, compared to other places in the world, it seems like Amazon's dominance over brick-and-mortar stores in the US far exceeds its grasp elsewhere. And while I was doing my Christmas shopping, I was suddenly struck by a possible explanation: the lack of walkable cities and public transport generally in America, coupled with the emphasis on strip malls rather than general commercial areas, which makes it much harder for people to quickly and easily access a wide range of goods in person.

See, in principle, I hate buying from Amazon; in practice, however, I live in a part of the US with negligible public transport and - crucially - do not have a car, which means that, if I want to buy something at at a physical shop, I'm broadly restricted to one of a handful of locations that are within a reasonable distance of my home. While I'm comparatively lucky, in that there are several such destinations to choose from, what's annoying is that it's only really feasible to rideshare to and from one of them on a single excursion, as opposed to hitting up multiple locations - and even if I had a car, these places are all far enough apart from each other that going to more than one in a single outing would take up a hefty chunk of time and involve driving on multiple freeways.

If I want to go to, say, IKEA, that's a 15-20 minute freeway drive to a location where there are no other shops nearby; if I want to go to Barnes & Noble - and I frequently do - there are three locations to choose from, but while the nearest one has the advantage of being next to my favourite boba place, the other surrounding shops contain little to nothing of interest to me, while the two more distant ones have more interesting surrounds, but no boba. There are two decently-sized Targets in driving range, but there's nothing else near each of them that makes the trip worthwhile, so I never get out there unless there's multiple specific things I need to buy, because if I only need one thing, the cost of a rideshare both ways is inevitably far more than I'd pay in shipping to get the same thing delivered.

And as best I can tell, this situation is pretty common throughout the United States. Unless you're lucky enough to live in a place with good transit and/or a thriving commercial downtown area, where you can easily walk between different kinds of shops in a single outing instead of having to drive 15 minutes, park, shop, drive 20 minutes and park again, ordering online ends up being, not just quicker and simpler, but vastly cheaper and more efficient than the alternative. Which is where Amazon enters the chat, using its shitty working conditions and vast resources to further fuck up the brick-and-mortar ecosystem, not because a majority of people inherently prefer buying shit online, but because a staggering proportion of America is expressly designed to require you to drive as much as fucking possible, even when that's the worst possible way to do things.

Whereas when I lived in Scotland, even though I had access to Amazon and would use it periodically - it was easier for Australian relatives to buy me Amazon gift cards than to either post a physical gift or buy me gift cards to UK stores, because many companies are Weird about people in one country trying to buy something online from them in a different country - for everyday needs, I could just... walk up to the local high street, from my house, on my human legs, and (if I so desired) hit up a homewares store, a hardware store, a bookshop, a pharmacy, a supermarket, a bric-a-brac place, an antique store, a cafe, the cinema, and a half-dozen other places. And this wasn't while living in a thriving metropolis: I was in St Andrews, a small university town! And if I really wanted a big day out, I could get one of the many regular buses over the water into Dundee and hit up the city center there, to exactly the same ends. Similarly, when I later lived in Aberdeen away from the city center, there wasn't much in walking distance of my house, unless I felt like trekking 40 minutes over to the nearest shopping complex - which I sometimes did, stroller and all, with my then-toddler in tow, because even if I got all tired out, I knew there'd be a bus to take me back home again. But I could also hop a different bus from the stop in my street and go straight to the city center, where - again - I could walk around hundreds of different shops with ease. Ditto every part of Australia I've ever lived in: even without a car, restricted to public transport or walking while toting around a small child, I was never reliant on internet shopping to get basic goods, because there was enough infrastructure that I could manage. And I'm not saying that's true of every part of Australia or the UK - rural areas in both countries are frequently very isolated and underserved by their local governments. But the difference now that I live in the US is stark.

Because here, the roads dominate. Freeways break up everything, and while there's a few nice commercial areas near me - streets with interesting shops and things to see - you cannot just hop a bus or train to access them, and even then, they don't flow naturally into the same sort of area the next suburb over: there's always a massive fucking multi-lane roadway in between, and the distance, even if walkable in theory, can be difficult to navigate on foot, because it's not designed with foot traffic in mind. You have to drive, and if you can't do that, then those places may as well not exist - and overwhelmingly, what you're left with access to instead are strip malls: clusters of random chain stores linked by a massive carpark and frequently situated in places with nothing else nearby; or at least, nothing else you can easily access without having to drive and park again.

And I genuinely think that this is a big part of why America has become so dependent on Amazon, as well as big box, everything-under-the-sun stores like Target and Wallmart: because without an abundance of accessible, walkable, local commercial centers, with all the greater variety they provide, they're the easiest, most efficient way for a car-dependent commuter populace - especially one so frequently time-poor, overworked, and underpaid - to buy shit.

Which suggests to me, very strongly, that one of the best ways to combat the dominance of not just Amazon, but big box chain stores, is to build functional public transport and walkable communities with decent commercial zoning - because the more people can easily access a variety of goods local to them, the less they'll need to be reliant on a few megacorps. So in the event that you needed another reason to support walkable communities and public transit: this is it. Fuck Amazon.

sindar-princeling

I was in a shop where someone was clearly watching the two towers in the background and I recognised it by sound alone after 2 seconds which makes me sound insane to an average person. and I could actually explain it very easily but of course trying to explain it with "well I only recognised it so fast because this specific version of the lorien theme only plays during the battle at helm's deep" does nothing to make me sound less insane

sindar-princeling

i love yalls tags so much ajsjshshd

writing-is-a-martial-art

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

thememedaddy

injuries-in-dust

Tell me more about NASA's scientific accuracy ratings for movies.

songue85

For those who are curious...

The Worst:

1) 2012 (2009): Neutrinos from a solar flare heat up the Earth's core, setting off the end of life as we know it. The plot conveniently ignores the fact that neutrinos pass straight through matter—even us—without doing much of anything.

2) The Core (2003): The Earth's core has stopped rotating and scientists have to drill into it to start it back up. The moviemakers go nuts with basic geology, ending up with something the New York Times called “monumentally dumb.”

3) Armageddon (1998): A team of drillers is sent to an asteroid on its way to strike Earth to split it into two parts they say will fly safely past the planet, completely ignoring Newton's First Law of Motion ("an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force"), which says that all they did was make two asteroids that would hit the Earth.

4) Volcano (1997): Los Angeles is destroyed by a volcano that springs up in the city. Bad science mingling with cheesy dialogue and effects.

5) Chain Reaction (1996): Keanu Reeves. Bubble fusion. A government plot to prevent the spread of the technology. The perfect recipe for bad.

6) The 6th Day (2000): Arnold Schwarzenegger is cloned. Because one of him just wasn't enough?

7) What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004): Read the synopsis on Wikipedia. It'll make your head hurt.

And the Best:

1) Gattaca (1997)

2) Contact (1997)

3) Metropolis (1927)

4) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

5) Woman in the Moon (1929)

6) The Thing From Another World (1951)

7) Jurassic Park (1993)

The space agency lists their favorite flicks

ospreyonthemoon

Why are the best ones good,though?

onehyperfixationatalltimes

When someone says they like Batman and you have to slowly find out if it’s “Batman is super cool and I like the few movies I saw” like or “here are all the robins and my top 16 or smth of all the kids” like

chasm-side

The two genders (Batman edition)

axel-ambassador

Bruh did I just get clocked wtf

beardedmrbean

urbanfantasyinspiration

What a lad

theriu

I LOVE his buddy who stands behind him to be his extra leg when he does the jive like they have CLEARLY COORDINATED THAT BEFORE

watermelon-converse

samglyph

As a horror guy I vehemently do not support hatred towards romance girlies. Sister genres in my opinion. We both enjoy familiar tropes. We both enjoy interesting relationship dynamics explored between two or more people. We both enjoy werewolves.

sadclowncentral

(grabs you by the shoulders) you have to make room for new experiences in your life. you have to go through the unpleasant work of leaving your comfort zone, even if just for a few minutes at a time. because if you don't, your brain will trick you into stagnation. you will start to believe that the world can barely fit you in it. but that's not true. it's the opposite way around. you can fit the whole word inside of you. your task is only this: to welcome it with open arms

sandersstudies

Love the tags!

dying-suffering-french-stalkers

Shiver My Timbers but I added the gunshot back

Visit Original Link

“Shiver My Timbers” from the Muppet Treasure Island soundtrack but I put the final gunshot back in so it’s not so anticlimactic

annabellioncourt

Reblogging again becuase absolutely none of this needed to go as hard as it did like listen to these lyrics in a straight to VHS kids movie. Robert Louis Stevenson could never.