this blog was made in the honour of my terrible as fuck memory, as those around me often love to lovingly remind me.
honestly. i can't for the life of me remember what i ate for breakfast yesterday, and u expect me to remember who my best friend was, 10 years ago? when it's been 10 years since i shifted?
honestly. lower ur expectations, man.
see also: the reason this blog exists
under the hood: @misht-iik-mov / @misht-iik (for the desis, if any)
problems i started facing from the earlier version:
the animation widgets (murmuration, turing, diffusion, attractor, the inkdrop/waves) were consuming up a ridiculous amount of battery - like my battery went from 100% to 20% in less than 4 hours (from ~8 hours before) just with these, because all were running in parallel. and i wasn't looking at them all the time, anyway. not at the same time, in the least.
i just felt. so many widgets are essentially in the same system, doing different systems (the simulations/animations, clock and calendar, storage and the neofetch/fastfetch widgets) - that version, i think, coherence was low, lol. i din't like it much.
one of my favourite stills
how i fixed them:
put all sims in one widget - stacked it like apple widgets. with one click, all sims can be shuffled through! this fixed the battery problem since only one of the widgets were constantly animating (/refreshing) at a time, so less resources of battery and memory used! doing this gave me my battery back lol.
put clock and calendar in the same widget - same thing as the above, more visual coherence across the system.
combined the storage and fastfetch widgets - same principle as the above. four stacks - system information, ascii art, battery, storage. again, more aesthetic lmao.
made the folders widget a sleek little line instead of the block it was before.
made the quote circular to accommodate the widgets and the space between them better.
added the same hover effect to everything.
added: my summer plans and my future plans, since i had the entire right side empty as my canvas, and i couldn't think of a better system than this.
just got a logitech mouse. why are there fucking ads on my app where i need to customise only 2 buttons. why do they need my email. i just want to scroll without destroying my hands. also why does my mouse need ai?!
"how to write a contemporary scientific article?" by vladimir m. krasnov gives a stellar debrief on how should researchers write their papers (& findings) these days, but that's entirely useless for me. i'm using this paper to read research papers, and this is what i'm going to follow because this what Krasnov's paper says:
why the hell should i read this paper?: as a computer science student trying to read more research papers to expand her knowledge base, i should probably read this paper NOT to gain insights on HOW to WRITE a paper, rather, to gain insights on HOW to READ a paper.
what the hell is this paper trying to say?:
- this paper by krasnov is trying to say that any good paper has the answers to 3 questions-that is, why, what, and so what.
- why basically is the question to why should one read the particular paper they've got eyes on-and the answer for it lies in the first paragraph/intro of the paper.
- what is the results section of the paper. this describes what has been done, to write this paper.
- so what is basically the end of the paper. like, what did the results in the what part even achieve? and why should the readers care about it, and how would it impact them.
- also: there are three stages of sifting for any research paper. or so krasnov says.
- first: the title of the research paper one is picking up should be easily google-able or else the discoverability of the paper has utterly failed, according to him. little would he know, due to the ai enshittification that google would be put through in 3 years of him writing this paper, that google also would be on par with useless in this. a pity, really.
- the title also must be informative yet concise, not a string of difficult to comprehend words that it becomes a secret message.
- second: the abstract of the paper should be present throughout the paper. the abstract here is basically the entire research condensed into one sentence. what he means to say is that, the moral/learning from the research/experiment done, or the results section of the paper must be presented as a moral repeatedly (once, in the introduction, next as a claim in the results, and in the end, as a moral in conclusions.)
- third: the figures in the research paper must read like extracts from a comic book. it should be self consistent like a story from a children's story book. basically, all the figures on its own should be able to form a story on its own that would mirror the text in the paper.
so what is this paper going to do for me?: this paper has successfully given me a template on what i should learn and has changed how i take notes, while reading future research papers, is all i can say.
Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:
ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff
Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.
In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.
Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.
A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.
Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you don’t think that’s cool as fuck then I don’t even know what to tell you.
This is super cool!
Also idk if this has any relevance whatsoever but if you wanna have an argument inside one tag you cannot have commas in it so that’s a real existing constraint that has forced tumblrites to construct commaless sentences and perhaps this has helped in adopting the custom into posts as well ok I have no idea if this is what’s happened just I think it’s a reasonable assumption there might be a connection
The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just
look at all you precious brilliant nerds nerding about language you make me so fucking happy omg
language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it
because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it
we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system
I love this so much and language is so great and I’ve noticed the lack of punctuation thing recently, even on twitter, and used it for like a specific kind of rhetorical effect. idk it’s so fun I fucking love linguistics and the evolution of language
Oh hey! This is the post that caused me to write a thesis. Yall know this post is cited in like five different academic papers that I found while researching for it? @prismatic-bell is a username I see screenshots of in academia these days. P sure they’re in the tumblr book too. Wild.
Linguistics is fascinating in this context because there are so many different ways to convey tone, rhythm and mentality just through how one writes on here.
English was always my best class, and I’ve edited more than a few pieces of fanfiction, but because Tumblr doesn’t allow you to use commas, I’ve noticed that I’ve stopped using commas where appropriate. Which surprises me when I notice it. But the idea that a lack of punctuation, especially commas, indicates rhetorical speech, makes a lot of sense, and puts the fact that I don’t always use commas at times when I would have before Tumblr, in a very different light.
FUCK I love linguistic nerds. Y'all are fantastic.
I think we would all line up to fuck a true artificial intelligence. But there’s nothing fuckable about an LLM masquerading as intelligence, and deception that wasn’t agreed upon beforehand is inherently unsexy.
Doesn't it suffocate you? How it seems like the only two options are Windows and Mac? Windows and Mac. The dichotomy between Windows and Mac.
But neither Windows or Mac are truly for you. There was once a time you were okay with using Windows, but you know that time is long gone. And to switch to Mac? You don't really want to switch to Mac either.
We both know Windows and Mac aren't for you. Switch to Linux. Customize your own experience the way you want it. Flash that iso and plug in that USB. Right fucking now. Do it right fucking now.
Shopping for laptops fucking sucks ‘cause I don’t know shit about computers. I’ve never had a computer with a functional webcam or microphone or the ability to play computer games made later than 2005 or a speaker that could play anything loud enough to hear from more than a foot away. How the hell should I know what I want?!
wow that would be such useful advice if only desktop PCs were small and portable and did not require desk tops on which to place them and I could take them with me when I traveled
I know this is a haha funny post, but for anyone who needs it, here's a quick-and-dirty of what you're most likely going to see while shopping for a computer/laptop (w/Examples)!
Cores/Intel Cores (Ex. i3, i5, i9)= Processing Speed= how fast your internet and other programs run. More cores is better.
Hard [Disk] Drive(HDD)/Solid State Drive(SSD) (Ex. 250GB, 480GB, 2TB)= How much you can store on your computer (files and apps and programs). A Terabyte(TB) is 1,000 Gigabytes.
*HDD is cheaper and more storage while SSD is faster, more durable, and uses less energy.
Memory/RAM(Random Access Memory) (Ex. 4GB, 8GB, 16GB) = How many different things your computer can do At The Same Time.
Ex. A computer with 4GB of RAM will probably shit itself if you try to play a game with with the internet open.
Video/Graphics Cards (Ex. NVIDIA, Intel HD Graphics, AMD) = How much visual complexity your computer can handle without throwing a tantrum. Only important if you play video games, do digital art, or watch a lot of movies on your computer. (When you're watching a video and it pixelates and lags when the action stuff happens, that's a bad/small graphics card)
Also the “avoid refurbished computers” tip is dead wrong.
‘Refurbished’ means it’s been in a technician’s hands recently and can’t be sold as new. That’s it. That’s all. In the US the FTC makes it illegal to sell something new if it’s been sold to an end user, so by definition a lot of perfect, ready-to-go hardware must be ‘refurbished’ in order to sell it again, no matter the circumstances.
Reasons a machine might be a refurb:
- Customer bought the item, decided they didn’t like the color, and returned it
- Customer bought the item, couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, and returned it
- Retailer opened the box for some reason and lost some of what gets shipped inside (manuals, cables, charger) and returned it
- Company bought 100 computers but went out of business before they could be installed or used
- Customer got a replacement for a damaged computer under warranty, and the manufacturer fixed what was wrong with the old machine and is now selling it as a refurb
I HAVE PERSONALLY WITNESSED ALL OF THESE SCENARIOS
Bottom line: ‘refurbished’ hardware has been repaired, tested, cleaned, and renewed back to original specifications by a trained technician. If anything, it’s probably MORE reliable now that it’s been doubly-tested.
All responsibly refurbished equipment comes with a factory warranty... the only refurbs I would avoid are items sold ‘as-is’ without warranty. That’s dangerous unless you know what you’re doing, like buying stuff for parts.
A lot of my most reliable hardware -- servers, laptops, tablets -- were bought as refurbished goods at huge savings. When I go shopping for a new thing I always look at the refurbished options first.
Crawling out of my hole to remind people that with this current update to Firefox (version 144) they've gone and dumped in their lot with a buncha lil AI tools, namely Perplexity as a new search engine.
So if the sound of that leaves your mouth tasting of tar, here's what you want to do:
In the url bar, type in about:config
It'll give you a big scary warning page that you might poke holes in your browser. Good. You want to do that. Click continue.
One by one, you're going to need to put each of these into the search bar in the page, not up top:
Each of these are gonna have a lil toggle icon on the right hand side that looks like a funky double-ended arrow. Click that and the value next to it should change to false. It all auto saves as you go. Some of these might already be set to false by default and that's peachy.
The next best thing you can do for yourself is to set your default search engine to udm14 or Qwant, but for now, we're just tidying the garden a lil bit.
One of the things about programming is that it's not too hard to be right, but you can always be more right. That's very appealing to a... certain kind of person. We all cope in different ways and so forth.
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