drafts clearinghouse. expect nothing. also sometimes posts that i think will do a little *too* well go here. for the sake of my own pride i will not differentiate between those categories.
Something that gave H.P. Lovecraft nightmares is the work of my favorite artist. In "At the Mountains of Madness" he specifically mentions "the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich."
maybe this is not my place to say because I am monolingual, and I'm sure it's part of a larger, more nuanced discussion about visibility and accessibility on the internet, but I think it'd be cool if people posted in their native languages more instead of in english. I see people do it way more on other platforms than on tumblr which is almost exclusively in english
El problema es, como bien has dicho, la accesibilidad y la visibilidad.
Tumblr en concreto es muy anglocentrista y un gran número de los usuarios no habla más que inglés. Si quieres que tus cosas lleguen a gente con gustos u opiniones similares, escribirlo en inglés asegura que la gente por lo menos lo pueda leer. Suma a esto el hecho de que bastantes series y tal son originalmente de habla inglesa (y a veces ni se traducen a tu lengua madre), lo que crea un fandom principalmente angloparlante.
Más allá de eso, también hay que tener en cuenta las diferencias culturales que surgen entre fandoms de distintos idiomas. Por ejemplo, durante mucho tiempo el fandom de Vocaloid angloparlante y el hispanohablante han chocado con respecto a temas como la piratería. En ocasiones es complicado manejar estas expectativas, y si sabes varios idiomas, peor incluso.
A mí me gustaría subir cositas en español y encontrar a gente que comparta mis gustos, pero en Tumblr en concreto es casi imposible. Tumblr ya es de por sí mucho más «nicho» en espacios hispanohablantes que otras RRSS como TikTok o Instagram, y si tus intereses no son muy populares, despídete.
La lingüística de los espacios de fans también está hipercentrada en el inglés. No es una pareja, es un ship; no es un universo alternativo, es un AU; no es destripar, es hacer spoiler, etc. Incluso las siglas: en español es LGTB, pero lo que sueles ver es LGBT. Parece una tontería, pero esta disonancia cognitiva hace que resulte muchísimo más complicado hablar en tu propio idioma en un fandom. Por no hablar de las innumerables referencias a posts o a memes... en inglés todo, por supuesto. Como te atrevas a hacer cualquier referencia cultural no inglesa, no te entiende nadie. Pierde la gracia.
Casi todo esto se puede achacar al imperialismo cultural estadounidense. El inglés es útil para comunicarse con gente de todo el mundo, pero su omnipresencia sirve de barrera para todos los demás idiomas. Quizás habría que reflexionar un poco sobre por qué coño el resto del mundo tiene que tragarse años de clases de inglés para hablar del juego que le gusta en una red social mientras muchos angloparlantes no se dignan ni a meter un texto en un traductor automático y prefieren pasar de largo.
obviamente no se puede negar el efecto del imperialismo cultural angloparlante y específicamente estadounidense, pero si queremos que un espacio tenga la más mínima posibilidad de ser una comunidad internacional, qué alternativa queda que no sea elegir un idioma para estandarizar?
¿es injusto que une angloparlante puede vivir su vida jamás teniendo que aprender un segundo idioma para participar en comunidades online cuando alguien que tuvo la mala suerte de tener otra idioma nativo sí tiene que hacerlo? sí, seguro. innegable. pero las opciones son:
estandarizamos en un idioma que ya tiene hablantes natives
todes aprendemos un idioma auxiliar que nadie habla nativamente
yo escribo en castellano y les alemanes escriben en alemán y les japoneses en japonés y no podemos leernos entre nosotres.
y no sé vos pero yo creo que, injusta que sea, la primera sigue siendo la mejor opción.
(o 4. todes tenemos un traductor automático instalado en el navegador. por ahí esa es viable ahora. no me gusta, la verdad, pero quizás es tema mío.)
[prev.]
>writing it in English ensures that people can at least read it.
>(or 4. we all have an automatic translator installed in the browser. that’s viable now. I don’t like it, the truth, but maybe it’s my subject.)
Translation software has gotten really good in the last five years. We may reach the point where there's less pressure for the rest of the world to learn English, at least for written communication. And Firefox, at least, does have inline translation pre-installed.
Español, ¿verdad?
El software de traducción ha mejorado muchísimo en los últimos cinco años. Quizás lleguemos a un punto en el que haya menos presión para que el resto del mundo aprenda inglés, al menos para la comunicación escrita. Y Firefox, al menos, incluye traducción integrada.
gotta say translating 'quizás es tema mío' as 'maybe it's my subject' is a great illustration of why i think translation software is an imperfect solution
(for that matter so is using human translators, but that was never viable in the first place)
fascinating thing firefox's built in translation did also:
en español es LGTB, pero lo que sueles ver es LGBT
firefox translates to
In Spanish it is LGBT, but what you usually see is LGBT
just straight up silently changes the acronym which makes the sentence not make sense!
machine translation is stunningly good these days but relying very heavily on it absolutely would lead to more miscommunications (and in fandom spaces at least, probably fights over those miscommunications). you could hope that people would default to giving others more grace with this in mind, but, well.
You should take some time to read @3liza's post documenting the Phantom Report Bug (which she deserves praise for doing, thank you eliza) and see how fucking broken Tumblr's report tool is.
I also want to reiterate something she is once again correct about: no one files bug reports. I have first hand experience working at Tumblr and I remember having to tell web devs on Staff "i saw a post about someone talking about a bug" and they were unaware because no one followed through to file a bug. I have fixed bugs that I saw people posting about that were in my domain (I'm a mobile dev) but were not in the system.
No this is not an endorsement of "complain about it enough and eventually someone will see it", this is an endorsement of "file a bug report directly to computer companies and people will most likely read it and probably fix it". I mean it this is not a Tumblr-only thing. I've seen this at every company I've worked for. Just fucking file a bug report please I beg you, software gets complicated and the devs are just unaware that there's a bug until you bring it to your attention. And they want to fix the bug! I promise!
I used to file bug reports decently often, but it got to the point where support always wanted so much evidence of the bugs from me (including for consistently reproducible bugs that affected literally every person I asked about it on here!) that it felt like I was doing unreasonable amounts of free QA for them, and even when I did do all that the bugs still never got fixed.
I mostly stopped filing the reports because it became too predictable that if I bothered, I'd have to follow it up with a bunch of work to even have a chance of being listened to, only to inevitably be told that support was unable to reproduce a bug that had been trivially reproduced by like a dozen random people. I dunno. It just wears you down after a point.
Not included in the doodle dump was me trying to somehow make a "Stratt is really into Harry Styles joke" in a way that was actually funny and only moderately out of character. I feel like there is room for at least one decent joke here, but what that would be... Who knows
writing prompt: in the world everyone has a number above their head, and its zero. but one day you stick an m&m up your butthole... and your number ticks up by 1.
i am losing my mind over discovering that there's a species of jumping spider (Pellenes nigrociliatus) that builds nests in empty snail shells and makes little silk webbing curtains to close off the entrance
They're not just nesting in empty snail shells (or alternatively, rolled-up leaves) but will also haul them up into vegetation to protect their eggs from the temperature extremes prevalent on ground level.
I read that they suspend the shells to keep them safe from ants, but that also makes sense! They use the shells not just for their eggs, but as shelter when molting and overwintering! Up to 6 jumping spiders have been observed overwintering in a single shell together, which is unusual since they're not normally social animals.
I just learned recently about a mason bee that also uses snail shells (just for eggs but still), I had no idea so many animals were taking advantage of abandoned snail shells! Really really cool
Hahah every trans person loves [product]. Trans culture is [music by cis people]. I mean [cis person] is soooo trans-coded. To be trans is to like [video game]. Queer culture is pretty much just [product]. Spend money spend money spend money consumerism labubu . Stuff animal . Video game . Generic Pop Star . Celebrity .
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Hippie church moms donating quinoa chips to my local food bank have done more for me materially than any internet idealist ever has.
People get pissed at me for being a pragmatist in my political ideals but I’ve been in the position where I was out of food right now.
And who helped me with that? Not people calling for some nebulous revolution. Not people telling me that the system was useless. Not people preaching at me to grow my own food. It was a church food bank partially funded by the state of Texas that some southern hippies donated a bunch of Whole Foods nonsense to.
And you know what? I’m sick and tired of defeatism. What can we get done right now, huh? Are you gonna accept something a bit better to help people right now or are you waiting for your perfect utopia to come to you?
Yeah, UBI is better than the quinoa chips. Sure. But right now the quinoa chips are stopping people from going hungry and if all we can do is get the food bank quinoa chips to more people, then I say so be it. That’s something. I’ll almost always take baby steps over nothing.
I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
Types of Board Game [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Types of Board Game
[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]
Boring
Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.
Abstract
Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...
Hyperspecific Theme
Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...
Overcomplicated
White Hat: It's a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshire,* but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...
Cooperative
Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.
Branded
Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.
Party
Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...
Social Deduction
Megan: Remember, per our *Find the Secret Murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does *not* count.
