(not so) secretly a total geek

Hi folks, I'm the Sylversmyth! ‘90s baby, aro/ace-spec, she/they NB/agender. I'm an artist and a metalsmith/jeweler. I draw some too (and very occasionally post it). I love reading but don’t do it enough (unless you count fanfic). Since I work with my hands I am CONSTANTLY listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I'm a big fan of way too many things, so you can expect basically zero consistency on this blog!

[antcomrade]

“Leave the Leaves” editorial illustration I neglected to post

[embroiderycrafts]

My favourite scene from ATLA. It gets me every time. by schlemiel26

[73chn1c0l0rr3v3l]

We have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write femslash fics. We have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who look past the popular juggernaut male characters to shower attention and Situations on underappreciated female characters. We have to thank our brave soldiers in the fandom trenches writing ignored female characters raunchily fucking each other sloppy style. We have to get on our knees and thank the brave soldiers in fandom who flesh out the female characters canon didn't care about and ship them with other women. I know it's hard to care about female characters in a world that seems to only revolve around men but I see you. And I love you

[sapphling]

"drug seeking" as a patient label one of the most dogshit stupid concepts of all time. fuuuck everybody look out this guy came in here expecting medical treatment. better watch out in case he goes to a restaurant and starts food seeking

[nudityandnerdery]

"[Y]our Harry Potter games are Cybertrucks" is such a good way to put it.

[nosongunsung11]

collection of posts for a very specific dynamic

[byjove]

I am so tired of thinness being the standard of health. There are people in the notes of my post about the state of health of the average American during JFK’s administration being like “Well, actually, Americans are in worse shape now because obesity epidemic.” THAT WAS BECAUSE THEY WERE ON DIET PILLS. SPEED. THEY CHAIN-SMOKED. THE AMERICAN DIET AND WAY OF LIFE IN THE 1960s WAS NOT, GENERALLY SPEAKING, HEALTHY AND WHOLESOME.

[drumlincountry]

Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍

[shortshortking]

Picked up my phone to consult my task list for today and now I'm reblogging this instead, case in point

[kitstacean]

i have ADHD! I've learned that the name of the game is to introduce DELAY and FRICTION in the short term, and work out ROOT CAUSES in the long term.

there's an app called one sec which BLOCKS all other apps on your phone. It can also restrict specific apps. It injects a delay in opening the apps - you can customise the message and delay length.

Android (One UI, maybe just samsung, I'm not sure) phones have settings that can whitelist specific apps during specific times or when a particular "mode" is active. This is under Modes and Routines.

In my experience these are the only ADHD apps that work.

More ADHD pro tips: uninstall as many apps as possible

Set your browser to close tabs automatically after a certain amount of time inactive (mine is 7 days I think). If you REALLY need the open tab, bookmark it.

If you really need the delay, set your phone/ computer browsers to clear cookies daily. This will force you to need to log in to websites every day. This introduces DELAY and FRICTION between you and the easy, habitual distractions.

DELAY and FRICTION are short term solutions. The habits run pretty deep and humans can get used to anything; you'll figure out ways to go around the blockers you put in place in time, and you'll need to create new blockers. Use the time to address the longer term ROOT CAUSES, because that's what's gonna actually make it stick.

ROOT CAUSES is harder. What would you rather be doing, if you weren't on your phone? Journal. Journal a lot. Take long solitary walks (LEAVE PHONE AT HOME!) and try to figure out what you really think, what you really want, when you're not on your phone.

I find I tend to use the phone to Escape. I have worked pretty hard to build a life I don't always want to escape from, as well as some mindsets. I know another very common mode is Seeking, and whatever you're trying to find in Phone chances are it's not there.

You need to retrain your brain to try looking somewhere other than Phone for whatever you're Seeking. This is hard. Might take forever, might never entirely break the habit. But the degree and frequency of me being on my phone for way too long has reduced a lot, in a relatively quick timeframe (1-2 weeks). Don't let slips become slides here.

[faunlord]

Genuinely I think a lot of the apps marketed for ADHD are scams targeting a population which is most likely to forget they signed up for a free trial and won’t have the attention span to go through the cancellation process. There’s simply no other justification for a glorified to-do list app with a premium version that costs 30 dollars a month.

I will second One Sec, though! The delay on opening apps is helpful when you’re stuck in that loop of opening an app, closing it, and then immediately opening it again. Plus they have ways of blocking apps that are harder to get around than the built in screen time limitations.

The other thing that’s been huge for me is turning off viewing history on YouTube. Without tailored m recommendations it’s a lot easier to mindlessly move on to the next thing, but the biggest benefit is that it breaks shorts. You can still view them on specific channels, and they come up in searches, but you can’t get the infinite scroll. Also with times being what they are, denying a company any data you can feels like a small win!

[thesylversmyth]

I am a HUGE proponent for the app ScreenZen. It is extremely customizable and has a ton of different applications of friction and delay that I can set at different times for different apps. For example, apps that have short form video that I might want to use for something else, like Facebook and Instagram, are set so that I can use them for an unlimited amount of time BUT every seven minutes I get cut off to a screen with a message I chose (a cute picture of my kitty and the phrase is this how you wanted to use your time?) and have to choose to open it again. That means if I go to find something on marketplace but get sucked into reels, I’ll get nudged out of it after seven minutes and I’ll have a chance to regroup and try again until I do the thing I needed to do. I can do this as many times as I want. However, I can also change the settings to limit how many opens I have in a day, or how long I have to wait between opens.

I like to read fanfiction in bed and will stay up all night. If I have it hard block after a certain time, I’ll get all grumpy and defiant and decide I don’t need to listen to that and turn it off. So instead, starting at a certain time, I can only open the app for fifteen minute increments, but as many of them as I want. I have to wait 12 seconds between opens and a screen comes up to encourage me to do a round of box breathing, and then I can open Firefox again. After 8 opens, I have a new setting to only allow five minutes at a time, AND each time I open the app it adds 10 seconds to the wait before I can open it again. That means if I really really want to finish a chapter I can buy the friction gets worse and worse each time until I’m waiting well over a minute to open it again. Usually once it’s over a minute I’m out of “the zone” enough that it’s pretty easy to decide I can stop reading and go to sleep.

Anyway I’m a huge fan, it helps so so much and has dramatically improved my quality of life around phone use.

It is available for apple and android.

[specialagentartemis]

Intelligent alien species based on bugs but specifically those moths that don’t have mouths and only live for a week after they pupate. This species’ whole conscious life is actually in the larval phase; larvae are the ones considered people, larvae are the ones with conscious and complex brains who build society, and each instar of the larva is treated as a different phase of life. Larvae become emotionally and socially and cognitively mature without ever becoming sexually mature. When they pupate, they metamorphose into something different and strange and close to mindless, with no mouth and no digestive system, whose only instincts are to mate and then quickly die. Metamorphosis is treated, functionally, like a person’s death, and the imago phase is a kind of proto-afterlife of majestic flight and the continuation of the species. Birth and death inextricably intertwined. Sex is not something people do during their lives, it’s a thing that is done as an imago after you’ve passed on from your life but before you return to the soil in death. Resultant eggs are collected by family members to raise. I think this would be fun.

[ralfmaximus]

Sony is killing all physical PlayStation game discs

New games released after January 2028 will be digital-only.

Sony has announced that from January 2028 it will entirely stop the production of physical discs for new PlayStation games. From that point onwards, new releases will only be available in digital versions from the PlayStation Store and other retailers. Games released before January 2028 will still be available on disc.

They cite "consumer preference" as the reason, but we all know what's going on. If there's no physical media, you don't really own your game. You're only renting it.

From the way this is worded I think future Playstation consoles will continue to have optical drives, at least as an option.

[hapalopus]

This announcement dropped right after Sony deleted 551 movies and tv shows that people paid for under the assumption that they were buying a physical copy, not renting it

Yet another reason to go back to buying Blu-rays: Sony is deleting over 500 'purchased' PlayStation movies with zero compensation due to a l

'Play has no limits,' Sony says, as it stops people playing TV shows and movies they paid to own

Piracy is so fucking back

[stitchposts]

Hey if you're coming to Washington DC for the Fourth of July: don't

We're having our turn in the heat wave and reports from the National Mall are brutal already this week. That screenshot is today's forecast (courtesy of the Capital Weather Gang) and tomorrow and Saturday are confidently going to be worse than this is.

The national Mall has no shade on the grass and you will be exposed to the sun constantly while also experiencing extremely high humidity. You will not be allowed a bag over a certain size to enter the mall and it has to be clear. You cannot have an insulated water bottle, it has to be clear. Reports are that there are two entrances to the area so you'll have to wait in line to even get in. I cannot find a number on how many cooling stations there are, except that it's "few" to "none" depending on what accounts I read online. Vendors are allegedly charging more than the posted prices and seem to be unprepared for actual crowds - these are the official vendors not the scam food trucks that park all around the edges of the mall. And that's the extent of the planning done because it was not a priority to make sure attendees don't pass out.

My local friends and I have reached a consensus that tourists are going to get extremely sick and none of us know what the EMT response or planning is on the mall this year. People are going to die.

Please stay out of this. It's not worth your health. Get your relatives and family to stop. I can give you recs for so many DC museums and things to do if you want to make the most of your trip. Any other local can too.

[sztupy]

A good day for Trump supporters to get a heat stroke

[stitchposts]

I cannot convey to you how much I do not want literal goddamn children to die. Also frankly, how I do not our local emts to have to watch any tourists die on their watch.

There is historically an assumption that attendees will have access to planned amenities. It's not in place this year of all years. There is a very real risk here and I'm trying to warn people, because people simply don't know how awful this is about to be.

Get fucked. This is very clearly a post trying to help people instead of rubbing my hands in glee.

[brawlite]

i have lived in the dc area for over 30 years, and the july 4 fireworks are simply just a huge event for tourists and locals, regardless of who is in office—it's a yearly tradition for so, so many families. the city gets absolutely jam packed with people, especially with children and older adults.

and dc is a swamp, literally. when we hit a heat wave like this, the heat just settles; it doesn't break at night and there's just zero relief, especially without shade in places like the mall. and without cooling stations or literally any other planning or precautions, people will get sick. they will get hurt. they will die.

if you know anyone planning on going, please tell them to stay home or find something else to do. watch the fireworks from somewhere else.

hoping everyone stays cool and safe.

[sugarsaltreading]

untitled comic by Sal Jiang (source)

[basuralindo]

So I just simultaneously did, and possibly didn't lose my job today :)

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

I don't know what else to say aside from I've been laughing all day and I'm gonna have a hell of a time explaining Schrodinger's Unemployment to the benefits office.

[basuralindo]

Update that is not an update because I'm basically certain this isn't what actually happened:

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

(also shout out to the person who proposed Carmen Sandiego)

[basuralindo]

ACTUAL (partial) UPDATE:

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

So now I'm officially out of a job. Because my workplace was literally stolen in the night.

[basuralindo]

Actually fuck it let's share some photos cause I wouldn't be inclined to believe this myself. It's not like anyone can stalk me at my job now and I'm not gonna have to see any coworkers that might find my tumblr.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

The last remains of a once Very Much Solid And Immobile Workplace

[basuralindo]

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

via @kagaminilen

[mysteryteacup]

[cut to a kiosk on legs, sipping a boba, while wandering into the nearest forest on chicken legs]

[ardanelvilyafeanturi]

Here you go @a-bit-too-dyscrasic

[a-bit-too-dyscrasic]

Oh my goodness you're my hero this is so beautiful

[basuralindo]

Holy fuck my job got fan art

[asexualbookbird]

hey. is this yours?

[basuralindo]

HOLY SHIT

[maggotsandcream]

Something I do find lovely about the first 4 Murderbot Diaries books (can’t yet speak on all of them) is:

Murderbot chronically finding new scientists/travellers to claim as “clients” (whether paid or not) like one of those sheepless herding dogs that goes around finding sheep (or anything else they can herd like a flock of sheep). Like it clearly has a protect humans instinct and a desperate need for enrichment.

Given its general lack of self awareness and unreliable narrator status, there’s no way in hell Murderbot is aware it’s doing this.

[depsidase]

[evstratt]

Eva Stratt aka the softest girl you've ever seen PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

[oakfern]

Day and night at the Parthenon. Yoshida Hiroshi, 1925.

[gowhiteboy-go]

I’ve featured this artist on my personal ‘artist of the week’ segment before! For anyone curious, these are actually woodblock prints, not canvas paintings! Hitoshi is well-known for incorporating western art techniques and sensibilities into his prints, which is why these almost feel like 19th century oil paintings rather than traditional Japanese prints.

Something to note is that both of these prints were made with the same wood blocks and inked separately, which is a process known as ‘betsu-zuri’. You can read more about that process here. Hitoshi used this technique a lot; his ‘Sailing Boats’ print set is my favorite example.

Anyway. Woodblock printing is a very cool process that I highly recommend you check out! The site I linked above has some great explanations if you’re interested.