Stormclouds Chainmail

I weave rainbows and write image and video descriptions for most posts. 40 something xennial. Person of colour, Bi, Demi, Non-binary. She/They. Officially nuts and disabled. TERFS, SWERFS, antichoice and antivaxxers can git tae fuck. [ID: profile image is a picture of a brown Syrian hamster in a cage. She is standing up looking expectant. Background image is the same hamster in a digging tower mostly filled with wood shavings. Her head is peering out over the top of the tower with the rest of her body still inside. End ID]

[beaniebabyenjoyer-deactivated20]

Accessibility can be easier than you think! Please take the time to read this!

I don't think people realize how easy it can be to find an image description in the notes. I'm not gonna lie to you and say it's always super fast and painless, but it can be. Especially on posts with a lot of notes, simple images (like text screenshots), and/or only a few images. It usually takes me less than 10 seconds to scroll through the notes of a post to check if it has an ID.

Just click on notes and sort by comments only. With just a quick scroll through looking for comments that start with things like "[ID:" or "Image Description:", you can check if it has a description or not. You will get better at spotting these quickly over time and it will get easier and faster! Once you've found one, just hit reblog from there. If there are mistakes or something, you can copy paste the ID with any necessary corrections into your own reblog instead with no credit necessary. Credit is not needed for image descriptions, because they are an accessibility measure.

Please check the notes for IDs, even (especially!!) if you don't take the time to write image descriptions normally. It's such a small, fast thing you can do when reblogging something to make your blog more accessible. Please, take the time. It takes less than a minute.

[Plain text: please check the notes for IDs. End PT]

[varian-ross-horror-author]

Without image descriptions, the majority of Tumblr is nothing but the word "image" over and over again.

For someone who uses a screen reader (like me!) finding an image description can take way longer than it does for a sighted person. Sometimes NVDA stops reading the notes, or the comments are nothing but fandom drama and derailment.

[stormclouds-chainmail]

I don't post anything without an image description so I end up writing a lot of them myself. I always check the notes first. If the only image description is way, way back in the notes I'll copy and paste it so it's easier for the next person looking. I'm happy for people to do that to my descriptions too, no credit necessary.

For writing descriptions, Google Lens is pretty good for grabbing text from a screenshot and identifying people or memes.

[stormclouds-chainmail]

Here's a Tumblr post on why image descriptions should be in the original post. It includes a list of sites describing how to write image descriptions.

Listen. Sit down around the fireplace with me for a moment. Artists. Gif makers. People who like memes. Anyone who posts images. Y'all hav

I'm very grateful to everyone who writes image descriptions and to the OPs who add them to their posts.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[blanketfortarchitect]

[rebloggingistheenemy]

[uncleasad]

[Image IDs: OP, post from Del Walker @TheCartelDel: “You know what I realized about Ai images in your marketing? It sends out the message that you've got no budget. It's the digital equivalent of wearing an obviously fake Chanel bag. Your whole brand immediately appears feeble and impoverished”

Reblog by blanketfortarchitect: Meme featuring a disappointed/disgusted Shrek in a restaurant(?), with text “They can't even afford a graphic designer”

Reblog by rebloggingistheenemy: 2-panel comic. In the top panel, a grinning man in a suit is holding an obviously computer-generated image. He says, “WITH AI image generation, we don't have to pay artists to advertise our product.” In the bottom panel, a person wearing a ballcap sees the image from the top panel in a large size (e.g., poster) with a ‘NEW’ badge. The person says, “Hmm AI…must be a cheap scammy product if they couldn't afford an artist” /end IDs]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[blanketfortarchitect]

[rebloggingistheenemy]

[uncleasad]

[Image IDs: OP, post from Del Walker @TheCartelDel: “You know what I realized about Ai images in your marketing? It sends out the message that you've got no budget. It's the digital equivalent of wearing an obviously fake Chanel bag. Your whole brand immediately appears feeble and impoverished”

Reblog by blanketfortarchitect: Meme featuring a disappointed/disgusted Shrek in a restaurant(?), with text “They can't even afford a graphic designer”

Reblog by rebloggingistheenemy: 2-panel comic. In the top panel, a grinning man in a suit is holding an obviously computer-generated image. He says, “WITH AI image generation, we don't have to pay artists to advertise our product.” In the bottom panel, a person wearing a ballcap sees the image from the top panel in a large size (e.g., poster) with a ‘NEW’ badge. The person says, “Hmm AI…must be a cheap scammy product if they couldn't afford an artist” /end IDs]

[coyotette]

[beyondplusultra]

added the rest of the transcript because it's worth reading!!

[stormclouds-chainmail]

[ID: image 1: post by Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com on 9 October 2025 containing a screenshot.

David Simon, creator of 'The Wire', being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Shapiro: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...

Simon: What?

Shapiro: ...Or saying...

Simon: You imagine that?

Shapiro: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.

Simon: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.

Shapiro: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.

Simon: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

Image 2 and 3.

Simon: I mean, what you're saying to me effectively is there's no original way to do anything, and...

Shapiro: No.

Simon: Yes, you are.

Shapiro: That seems like a kind of absolutist take.

Simon: Not only, I think, is it a fundamental violation of the integrity of writers and also of copyright - you know, when I sold all the scripts I sold you know, 150 to HBO and, you know, maybe another 50 to NBC - I didn't sell them so that they could be thrown into a computer with other people's and be used again by a corporation.

Shapiro: So would you ever agree to a contract that saw any role for Al at all?

Simon: No, I would not. If that's where this industry is going, it's going to infantilize itself. We're all going to be watching stuff we've watched before, only worse.

Shapiro: Do you think that position is where this is likely to end up?

Simon: I mean, if a writer wants to play around with Al as the writer and see if it helps him, I mean, I regard it as no different than him having a thesaurus or a dictionary on his desk or a book of quotable quotes. Play around with it. If it starts to lead the way in the sense that a studio exec comes to you and says, Al gave us this story that we want, that's not why I got into storytelling, and it's not where I'll stay if that's what storytelling is.

End ID]

[writing-prompt-s]

You turn on the radio one morning to find another one of those Rap songs where every 4th word is a swear. Naturally the Radio bleeps it out, but you realize that it sounds familiar. You realize that the rappers are speaking in Morse code.

[dailylexiconic-blog]

Your eyes widen as you swerve over onto the shoulder of the expressway, nearly hitting a Jeep Cherokee in the process. It didn’t matter to you. Frantically searching the glove compartment, the backseat, and your purse, you finally find a small notepad and a pen with a low ink cartridge. You listen closely to the radio, and begin to scribble down as much as you can. You realize it was merely a pattern.

— -. . / - .– — / - .– — / ..-. .. ..-. - -.–

Unfortunately for you, you aren’t very well versed in translating Morse code, merely recognizing it. You reach into your purse to grab your phone, but after a moment of searching, you realize you had left it at home before you left for work. “God damnit,” you mutter. You’re more than halfway to your office, and you’re already running late due to the fact that that you decided to follow some whim and jot down some cryptic message from a provocative rapper. Concluding that it would probably be best for you to mosey to work, you pull back onto the expressway and try to make it to work on time.

Upon arriving at work, you ask any coworker in sight if they know Morse code. Nobody seems to, and some don’t even know what Morse code is. You slump your shoulders in disappointment and head over to your desk, when suddenly, the quiet, mouse-like secretary clears her throat and says, “Excuse me, I know Morse code!”

You turn around with the same wide eyes as before. “You do!?” you ask vigorous excitement, which seems to startle the young woman.

“Yes,” she says, “when I was younger, I planned on joining the navy, so I taught it to myself.” You feel a bit sorry for her, that she wound up as a mere secretary instead of a naval officer, but that feeling of pity didn’t stop you from being grateful for the lucky coincidence of her knowing Morse code. You show her the pattern.

— -. . / - .– — / - .– — / ..-. .. ..-. - -.–

“That’s all there is?” she asks, furrowing her brow.

“Yeah,” you shrugged, “it just kept repeating that over and over again. What does it say?”

“One, two, two, fifty.”

Your heart sinks a little. “What is that? What does that mean, is it like a phone number or house address or something?”

The secretary shrugs. “I’m really sorry, I don’t know. It’s too short to be a phone number, but beyond deciphering it, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

You nod slowly, and though you understand, you are still not at all satisfied. You go to sit at your desk. 1 2 2 50. The sequence plays over and over in your head all day, and needless to say, your curiosity an wonderment got the best of you. It was not a very productive work day.

You head home, and the same damned song plays on the radio. You shake your head as if that would make the song stop, then decide to plug 12250 into your GPS to see if there are any autofill results. None. You become increasingly frustrated.

When you get home, your daughter is sitting at the kitchen table, working on homework. She runs up to you and gives you a big hug, and asks about your day at work. You put on a fake smile and sigh. “Interesting,” you say— no doubt sugarcoating the intense excitement, disappointment, and confusion.

“Will you help me with my homework? I have to memorize something for my history class tomorrow.”

“Of course, doll! What are you memorizing?”

She hands you a laminated sheet of paper. “Roman numerals!”

You glance over the page, your eyes quickly darting from one, to two, to fifty.

It dawns on you. You’d recognize this pattern anywhere.

I II II L

[fluffiest-fox-kira]

Go to hell

[catchymemes]

[spottytonguedog]

This is legit the best thing I’ve read all day.

[scretladyspider]

Please read it, please

[cartoonnachos]

I will never not reblog this story

[lucretiafly]

Original text for screenreaders, people who zoom in their text and the like. Cos everyone deserves to access this story!!

Post by: Malgayne

“When my grandfather was young he owned a roadside motel, and my mother used to do work around the motel for the family. The building was old and they had bad pipes, so visits from the plumber were a fairly regular occurrence over there.

At one point they had a clogged toilet after a guest checked out, so they called the plumber to come and clean it out. The plumber came in with his bag of gear and set to work, but the clog was stubborn. After a few tries, he decided he needed to get the snake.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a serious plumbing snake, but the big ones are a sight to behold. This isn’t a little crank auger, it’s a full-on electrical powered snake with a big motor on the back and a little grabby claw on the end.

So he fires up the snake and sends the metal coil down into the pipes with the claw closed, figuring whatever’s down there he’ll just bump it a bit, push it down the pipes until it clears - but this doesn’t happen either. Finally, in frustration, he twists the control to open the mechanical claw at the end of the coil, closes it on something, throws the motor in reverse and starts to pull it back up.

By now a couple of members of the staff have gathered in the room to try and figure out what the hell got flushed down the toilet that this giant machine couldn’t remove. The motor is really straining - you know that sound an electric motor makes when it’s working really hard? The whole machine is struggling to pull whatever this is back up through the pipes and into the room.

Finally, after an extended wait, the object is slowly dragged, sopping wet, out of the toilet bowl - and it’s a shower curtain.

The staff is dumbfounded. They’re trying to figure out how this could have happened. It would be weird enough if the guest had ripped the shower curtain down and flushed it down the toilet, but the shower curtain in the room is still there. It would be even weirder if the guest had brought their own shower curtain to the motel and tried to flush it down the toilet, but it’s clearly one of their shower curtains. Did they try and steal the shower curtain, leave with it, then feel guilty and come back only to find that the shower curtain had already been replaced, and then flush the shower curtain down the toilet to hide the evidence?

While they’re discussing this, the room phone rings. The person on the other end is screaming, hysterical, so it takes a few minutes for them to figure out that it’s the housekeeper who was cleaning the rooms. After a few moments, they manage to get the story out of her:

The snake had missed the clog entirely. Rather than spiraling down into the plumbing where it was intended to go, it had wound its way into the central line, and then back up the pipes in the room next door. It spiraled its way up, out the toilet bowl, and then started flailing wildly around the next-door bathroom like a Lovecraftian nightmare made of steel, knocking things off of shelves and clattering furiously around the room. Then, while the hapless housekeeper watched in horror, a metal claw opened on the end of it and snagged the shower curtain, ripped it off the bar ring-by-ring, spun it around the room until it was coiled tightly around the cable, and dragged it back down into the toilet bowl.

The actual clog was never found.”

[athousandvictories]

“For Fury Road’s fluid editing, Miller called upon his wife, Margaret Sixel, who had spent most of her career editing documentaries and had never cut an action movie before. ‘We’ve got teenage sons, but I’m the one who goes to the action movies with them!’ laughed Miller. ‘So when I asked her to do Mad Max, she said, ‘Well, why me?’ And I said, ‘Because then it’s not going to look like other action movies.“ And it doesn’t. Compare the smart, iterative set pieces of Fury Road to one of the incoherent car chases in Spectre, for example, and you’ll see that Sixel prizes a sense of spatial relationships that has become all too rare in action movies. ‘She’s a real stickler for that,’ said Miller. ‘And it takes a lot of effort! It’s not just lining up all the best shots and stringing them together, and she’s very aware of that. She’s also looking for a thematic connection from one shot to the next. If it regressed the characters and their relationships, she’d be against that. And she has a very low boredom threshold, so there’s no repetition.’ That Sixel was able to whittle 480 hours of footage down into a movie that sings still astounds Miller. ‘It’s like working in the head of a great composer,’ he said. ‘Movies like this one — in particular this one, because it’s almost a silent movie — are like visual music. In the same way that a composer has to have a strong casual relationship from one note to the next, paying attention tempo and melodic line and overall structure, it’s exactly the same process that a film editor must have.’ Sixel, surely, is one of the greats.”

—

Director George Miller Explains Why His Mad Max: Fury Road Deserves These Oscar Nominations (via jag-lskardig)

so good on George Miller for giving credit to his wife and colleague. that said, FUCK YES women have ALWAYS edited for male directors without getting any recognition within the industry let alone any kind of mainstream acclaim. I mean, film editing isn’t really on the radar for most moviegoers/watchers so yeah, I don’t expect people to know this? But goddamn, even so many self-proclaimed film and cinema buffs fail to realize that so many of the “best” movies (mostly directed by men, natch) were edited by women. Does anyone remember that quote/anecdote about male directors discouraging their female film editors - or even actively sabotaging potential opportunities - because they didn’t want to lose the person who made sense of all their footage? 

(via ladyoflate)

[leoreturns-deactivated20110811]

I have been waiting all year to post this.

[tumboner]

omg

[merspers]

This has been in my queue for months.

[mcgooglykins]

I missed it last year and I vowed that would NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

[thatsoundsprettynice]

YES

[xbstnmnr-deactivated20241116]

omg i didnt reblog this last year!

[stormclouds-chainmail]

[Image description

Two stills from Miss Congeniality.

The host is asking Miss Rhode Island questions.

The host says, “Describe your perfect date.”

Miss Rhode Island responds with, “That’s a tough one. I’d have to say April 25th. Because it’s not too hot and not too cold. All you need is a light jacket.”

She smiles at the end and the host looks confused.

End description]

[yesornopolls]

Any plans for the weekend?

Yes

No

Voting ended onApr 27

[22psyduck]

New guidelines on feeding wild birds in the UK due to a disease that is lowering the population, especially of chaffinches and greenfinches

Some pretty seismic changes they’re calling for here - no feeding at all besides a little mealworms, suet or fat balls between May and October, no flat feeders at all, change the location of your feeders each time they go out, and clean your feeders and bird baths weekly.

The birding community is still working out the nuances, as we are wondering how this will affect populations in certain areas devoid of natural resources for birds, and if it will start another catastrophe, but this general advice should be followed for now

Want to help garden birds? Don't feed them in warmer months, says RSPB

The UK's largest bird charity has issued new guidance advising people to stop using feeders to help wildlife thrive.

[22psyduck]

@todaysbird hopefully you can reblog to help spread this message for UK birders.

[fivepebble]

people say folks with adhd struggle with "delayed rewards" aka long term goals and as such we tend to focus more on short term rewards. what they don't talk about is that at when we Do accomplish long term goals we don't actually feel anything proportionate to the amount of work we did to achieve it. In my head I suffered for a while and then money spontaneously appeared in my bank account.

[oaks-and-willows]

"Don't you feel satisfied that your windows are so clean now?" It sucked and it sucked and now I don't care. I just remember the sucking.

[trickstertime]

Huh? What's this?? Something is on this 5c coin???

ENHANCE

[none-ofthisnonsense]

[ID: A picture of a 5 cent Euro coin with a ruler to scale, looking like a normal design but with some tiny text visible.

[Second ID: A close-up of the engraving. It is written "'Average person engraves memes at 0.2mm' Factoid actualy just statistical error. Average person engraves 0 memes at any size. Engraver Dave who lives in a workshop and engraved bullshit all day is an outlier adn should not have been counter.". The text is a parody of the Spiders Georg Tumblr meme. /End ID]

[through-a-historic-lens]

Mississippi’s first interracial marriage, August 1970.

[brazenbells]

Adding @bethanyactually 's informative tags!

[sailor-cerise]

[IDs:

1st image: black and white wedding photo of a Black woman in a wedding dress and veil, standing close to her husband, a white man in a suit and tie. Their arms are linked, and they are smiling. They are in a room with a low ceiling.

Her dress has a simple neckline and a tidy bow on an empire waist. Her veil is gathered at her neck by a large lace choker, making the gauzy fabric frame her face. She has short, dark, wavy hair, styled to look artfully messy.

He has a dark grey suit and a striped tie, tied so that the tail lies next to the front of the tie, making it look long. He has short brown hair, smooth but not slicked back, puffy with volume. He also has short side burns, and a flower pinned to his lapel. They arms are

2nd image: Tumblr tags:

#i was curious and did some googling #this is berta and roger mills #they had to go to court to get a marriage license and because of federal laws they were eventually able to do so #they were threatened and assaulted multiple times and eventually moved to atlanta #where roger worked at the us dept of education in the office that enforced integration of the county's schools #mississippi's racist anti-miscegenation laws were not enforced after 1970 #but they remained part of the state constitution till 1988 when they were voted out #roger is a civil rights lawyer and so is one of his daughters #she helped fight for partner benefits after marrying her wife in new york in 2013 #and also worked to get nationwide marriage equality #history is closer to us than it sometimes seems #humans have always been humans

/End IDs.]

[thefernhands]

If you're fifteen or older an still sleep with a stuffed animal please reblog this.

My friend is embarrassed and thinks she’s the only one and I said id prove her wrong.

[wvterways]

[sailor-cerise]

[ID: tweet from "The CryptoNaturalist", @CryptoNatureVPTONATURA:

We are here and can fill our lungs because our world is populated by towering, green giants with the arcane ability to drink energy from a colossal ball of cosmic fire 93 million miles away. It's odd isn't it? Fairytale creatures don't often notice the magic of their own worlds.

/End ID.]

[eeyore9990]

Write Your Story

I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3.

Why?

He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn’t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that’s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me – his first beta – and y'all?

He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.

Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, “There is already a Minecraft story.”

Me: Okay? So what?

Lucifer: If there’s already a story, no one will read mine.

Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, “What if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.”

He laughed.

I showed him Mornings Aren’t For Everyone. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.

Then I said, “So do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love… would anyone read it?”

He laughed and said, “No because you already did.”

So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.

I’m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.

Write your story. It doesn’t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn’t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.

And I want to read your story.

[naamahdarling]

Holy crap, this is A+ parenting and such a good lesson.

[guerrillatech]

[jv]

This is akin all those hot takes about the 2k bug being an hoax:

"Remember when they told us every computer was going to crash on 1/1/01 and there would be chaos and then nothing happened?"

Yeah, I remember. And I'm sure every programmer and sysadmin that contributed the billion person/hour global effort to prevent it also remembers.

[alarajrogers]

No one talks about acid rain anymore, either. And that's a very good thing.

[oligopspispopd-deactivated20221]

see also START and START II, which significantly reduced nuclear stockpiles

[cop-disliker69]

International cooperation is actually so effective that most people don’t even notice it happening, and then erroneously believe it can’t solve anything.

[silly-jellyghoty]

Fixing issues before they develop into actual disasters is such an underappreciated thing it hurts at all levels.

We don't talk about acid rain because there isn't any more acid rain because when acid rain started happening and we learned that the cause was mainly sulphur oxide and carbon monooxide from car exhausts, countries all over the world made it a law that car companies had to produce cars that produced less exhaust with better effectivenes (burning the fuel all the way to CO2 instead of the halfassed CO) and oil rafineries to remove the sulphur from the gasoline in the first place.

We don't talk about computers crashing because of the turn of the century, because thousands of programmers worked very hard to write updates and patches for Every Single Program humanity as a whole used back in 1999 and then somehow managed to failtest, distribute, and update every single device and system, be it an online or offline one before the midnight of the 1st january of 2000.

On a much smaller scale, no one ever commenta or notices cleaners and housekeepers doing their job - be it at home or at whole buildings - because they always make sure that there's nothing to notice. But don't be fooled - at any point of your life you are one week of them not doing away from swimming in trash and filth with nothing to eat and nothing clean to wear. Only then you would notice.

Now it's time to do that thing again and make sure that we don't kill our whole planetary ecosystem within the next century.

[silver-tongues-blog]

[sailor-cerise]

[IDs:

1st image: two tweets.

From "Matt Walsh", @MattWalshBlog

Remember when they spent years telling us to panic over the hole in the ozone layer and then suddenly just stopped talking about it and nobody ever mentioned the ozone layer

From "Derek Thompson", @DKThomp

What happened is scientists discovered chlorofluorocarbons were bad for the ozone, countries believed them, the Montreal Protocol was signed, and CFC use fell by 99.7%, leading to the stabilization of the ozone layer, perhaps the greatest example of global cooperation in history.

2nd image: Bender, the robot from Futurama, staring out into space, showing blue and purple nebulas and bright white stars. A caption reads:

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

/End ID.]