Xuebing Du
Three Goblin Art
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will byers stan first human second
sheepfilms
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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Sade Olutola
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Jules of Nature
Game of Thrones Daily
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Today's Document
izzy's playlists!
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@very-black-cat
Absolutely not a new observation but i love that the toki pona word for animal, "soweli," is written like this
fuck man that sure is
i showed this post to my boyfriend last time i saw it (because hes a linguistics nerd in general and a toki pona nerd in specific) and i am delighted to inform everyone that all the words for various types of animals are little fuckin dudes
doodling a bunny vs doodling a hare
a few more quick doodles, for fun
mythical duo edition - jackalope and wolpertinger
Heartbreaking
not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram
the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis
Can I just ask, why?
(adding your tags since I'm addressing them)
It’s polite, for one. Professional doesn’t need to mean elaborate—in fact, most professional emails are aiming to be as clear and concise as possible. (in english at least, I know some other languages have some very complicated and elaborate email etiquette)
Greetings and signatures also don’t need to be elaborate. I feel like lots of people overthink it and assume that professional emails need the whole “dear x, my name is x and I am writing this email to inform you about [topic], sincerely [my name and all my contact info]” shebang, when really it’s as simple as adding a quick greeting/signature and avoiding super informal slang.
Here’s an comparison using art commission inquiry as the topic, written with zero extra fluff:
Hi, Are you currently open for commissions? Thanks, [my name]
If I want to add a little more fluff, maybe I write:
Hi, I love your art and wanted to ask if you're currently open for commissions. Here are details of what I'm interested in. Thanks for your time! Thanks/best/etc, [my name]
Those are very short while also being more polite than an email that just says:
are u open for comms??
with zero greeting/signature and very informal tone.
There’s still a person on the other side reading that email, and just like how being polite with a customer service agent on the phone will get you better results than being rude with them, sending a clear and professional email will have you taken more seriously by whoever is reading it. All 3 emails get the same point across, but the last one leaves a much worse impression. You don’t speak to your close friends the same way you’d speak to strangers, and it’s the same in text form. I get so many emails that are just abrupt questions, with not even a quick "thank you" either in the initial email or as a follow-up after I respond, because they ghost me as if I'm just a chat bot answering questions.
I know complaining about email language sounds like a ~corporate america white-collar bullshit~ kinda thing, and there is indeed significantly more elaborate email etiquette that can vastly differ depending on your job/field that I’m not addressing at all, but just having the very basics goes a long way in how your emails are viewed by other people.
Oh boy, let me tell you, we get emails from students like this all the time at my pay job. Barely any information about what kind of help they need, if any info at all. No names, no student ID, not even using an email known to the school.
It took me ages to figure out they were treating writing emails like they were talking to a chatbot.
Now besides the obvious issues - I cannot help you if I spend the better part of three days trying to pull basic information out of you - these messages look like spam. More importantly, they can come across as a scam, and that makes it even less likely to get the problem fixed.
Taking the time to write a proper email is not only polite, it could be critical to getting somewhere in your education, in your career, and in writing and art. Use templates if you need them, but it is worth the effort to sound like an actual human trying to talk to another human.
Also, please don’t use the subject field for your request. By that I mean:
To: x
From: Y
Subject: review Mr smith room 1
(Can you tell I get multiple of these a week?)
Firstly, it comes across as you not having the respect to take the time to think of a separate subject. It also comes off a bit shouty.
Secondly, it makes it harder for us to search back for it.
Thirdly, people are less likely to write more details if they are doing it in the subject field. I am sitting at my computer, feeling shouted at and disrespected, and I have zero context for why I need to see Mr Smith.
Instead:
To: X
From: Y
Subject: Mr Smith Fall Review 1/2/2024
Hi X,
Mr Smith had a fall overnight. Please review when able.
Thanks,
Y
It probably took you less than one minute extra, and it’s made me a whole lot more likely to attend to your request quickly and cheerfully. It also means that the reply email will make sense to anyone I have to copy in.
I am being serious here: in addition to politeness and not being assumed to be an unserious person who has difficulty writing (which is disqualifying for many jobs!), THIS IS AN ACCESSIBILITY ISSUE!
Lower case is not just a cute stylistic choice. It is making it actively harder for your recipient to read. You may be used to deciphering unpunctuated lapselock screeds as a result of being on Tumblr. You cannot assume the same of the adult reading your email. You also cannot assume English is their first language, they do not have dyslexia, etc.
Capital letters, punctuation, paragraph breaks and so on are not just boomer shit nobody needs. They are context cues many people need in order to take in text fast and smoothly.
Separately, but related, the basic furniture of the commissions examples above (starting with a short greeting, how the question is phrased, etc) are also really important to establish tone. You know, like some kind of thing that... indicates... tone? Also an accessibility issue for people like me. If someone wrote to me like the third example, "are u open for comms??", I would actually read that as threatening! It looks like an anon ask! The double question mask reads as impatience! I might not even reply! And if I do, my anxiety has already skyrocketed, and I'm already wondering if getting the necessary info from you is going to be a problem.
Anyway. I'm not saying I'll have a low opinion of you if you type in all lower case. I am saying I'll have a low opinion of you if you think it's appropriate to send me a professional email in all lower case. Because that says you don't know how to code-switch or you are inconsiderate, and that is a problem when it comes to basic adulting.
I'll also think you're a bottom.
They have done studies on email composition. The time you “save” not doing this on outward emails is lost at a much higher rate in the other side. Like, you save a minute dashing off an email without rereading for ambiguity and putting in a proper subject etc, and it takes the recipient an extra 5-10 minutes to decipher it.
sometimes i’m like ‘fanfiction can’t shock me anymore i’m numb to it’ then i find this shit
every moment of a cumulative thirteen years of catholic education is simultaneously screaming out in agony at this reply
Tbh the only way an average-looking guy could get 12 hot guys to follow him around and hang off his every word is if he’s the only top
Obviously Christ was a top, the Catholic Church keeps reminding us he’s inside everyone, and the one and only time he got nailed, it took him three days to recover.
So ain’t nobody gonna ask OP what they were doing looking for Jesus/Judas fanfiction?
trying to find jesus/judas fanfiction to read i thought that was obvious
OPs url makes this the funniest thread I’ve ever read in my life
supernatural actor men getting married and. I can't believe but we. well we. we got a. we got a gif for it
i hope wherever daisyisawriter91 (author of 23 of 40 garth/benny fics on ao3) is they are having a good day
do you ever just
happy 10 year anniversary to this game changer thank u @joscribbles for your services
can’t believe it’s been 10 years since i learned to always put my name on my art, even if it’s just a shitpost, bc u never know what’s going to blow up
anyway here’s a signed version if you wanna use it to shut up people who are trying to tell you their Opinions
World Heritage Post
Prime Video: So, Good Omens Season 2
Neil Gaiman: Yes
Prime Video: What‘s the Story?
Neil Gaiman: No story, just vibes.
Prime Video: Neil, we need a little more to work with.
Neil Gaiman: Okay, do you remember Sister Theresa Garrulous and Sister Loquacious from Season 1?
Prime Video: Yes?
Neil Gaiman: They‘re in a coffee shop AU.
Prime Video: Aaaand?
Neil Gaiman: And they need to fall in love.
Prime Video: But Neil what about Crowley and Aziraphale?
Neil Gaiman: Oh, don‘t worry. They‘re already in love.
Prime Video: Not sure this is enough.
Neil Gaiman: Naked Jon Hamm.
Prime Video: OK, yeah, sold.
Actually I started with Naked Jon Hamm. But otherwise, yeah, more or less accurate.
Frog.
Frog, but now in motion.
Photographers all know about polarizing filters. They remove reflections off the surfaces of objects. We use them to see into water or windows that are obscured by those reflections. But anything with an even slightly glossy surface has a layer of reflection on top. So if you have a shiny green plant, it can remove the shiny and reveal a very saturated green underneath. Polarizers also remove a lot of scattered and reflected light from the sky. Which reveals a deep blue color you didn't even know was there.
Here is a photo I took of my circular polarizer.
And the first thing I noticed when walking outside during the eclipse was the color of everything was more saturated, just like in that circle. Apparently, an eclipse significantly reduces polarized light and I got this creepy feeling because I was only ever used to seeing the world like that through the viewfinder of my camera.
The other thing I noticed was my outdoor lights. I leave them on all the time because I never remember to turn them on at night. And usually the sun will render them barely visible during the day. On a very sunny day they almost look like they are off.
But you can clearly see they are shining and even flaring the camera during the eclipse.
Our eyes adjust to lighting changes very well so it was hard to tell how much dimmer things were, but that is a good indication. I took this photo a few minutes ago and you can see how dim the lights appear after the moon has fucked off.
I did a calculation using the exposure settings between these two photos. The non-eclipse photo has 7 f-stops more light. That is 128 times or 12,700% more light.
A partial Pringle eclipse cut the sun's light by 99.2% and somehow our eyes adjusted to make it seem like a normal sunny day (with weird ass saturated colors).
Additional Observations
So, I woke up about 4 minutes before the eclipse. I was very unprepared to photograph it in the normal quality you'd expect from a photographer. However, I did capture some interesting details that I thought I'd share beyond the lack of polarized light.
First up... the shadows.
The shadows were very sharp. In photography there is this concept of light going from a spectrum of hard to soft. Hard light has very high contrast and sharp shadows. Soft light is more flattering and diffused with softer shadows.
To get hard light and sharp shadows you need a small "point" light source. A point light can either be very small or it can be very far away or a combination thereof.
In the studio you could use a bare bulb flash to get a point source.
Or you can attach a modifier like a softbox to create a large light source. The bigger, the softer.
The sun is massive, but it is also super duper far away. So it ends up being the smallest point light source available. However, the atmosphere can scatter and diffuse that light, essentially "enlarging" the light source.
To get perfect hard light shadows you need to go to... the moon.
But the eclipse blocked out about 99% of the sun and it reduced the amount of scattered light. And it greatly reduced the size of the light source causing some very defined sharp shadows.
But not *all* of the shadow was sharp. My left shoulder is very defined but my right shoulder is a bit fuzzy.
You can see it on my fingers too.
Sharp on one side, soft on the other.
This is essentially because the sun has been split into two different light sources in two different directions.
In one direction you have a larger light source causing softer shadows.
And in the other direction you have a smaller light source causing sharper shadows.
In photography we have these strip softboxes that we usually place behind a subject to create an edge light.
Only a narrow, small band of light is hitting the body. If we were to use a strip box to light a face, it would be a small light source creating sharp shadows.
But one trick we can do is to turn the strip light horizontal.
Now the light source hitting the face is large as it wraps around the head.
So a long and narrow light source is essentially large and small simultaneously. And depending on the direction the light is coming from it is either hard or soft light.
Destin from Smarter Every Day explained this phenomenon briefly in his eclipse video.
I also think this large and small light source phenomenon affected my lens flares when I photographed the sun.
In this photo it literally looks like I'm getting starburst flares from two light sources.
And in this photo the flares have a sharp bright edge as well as a dimmer more diffused area.
Normally these starburst flares (caused by light leaking through the metal aperture blades in the lens) have more homogenous tines without that feathering effect.
And then I noticed a different kind of flare in my photos—with all the colors of the rainbow.
And each band of color matched the crescent shape of my partial eclipse.
Like a camera obscura, these flares were in reverse orientation to the crescent sun. And while I wasn't able to get the sun in sharp focus, the purple section of the flare is very defined. I think that represents approximately how much of the sun was covered by the moon at my location—about 130 miles from totality.
I am a student of light. That is essentially what photography is. And I found this to be a fascinating lesson on how bonkers light can be. I was a little bummed I couldn't road trip to southern Missouri to see totality, but I am grateful to still have a cool eclipse experience.
such rage in such a little body
i think he needs to ca
he needs to calm his ti
calm his t
this is the greatest photo I've seen in ages
Gollum and yoda sucking each other off while a big steamroller gets closer and closer
This is one of those firing shots in to the air, property value lowering posts that keeps this site utterly unmarketable
CO2 level: Severe
The AI's that are supposed to be learning from Tumblr posts:
Trash Squad [Inspired by Vine and James Dean].
the allergy i am seeing grow up around small talk in any form is troubling to me. do you know how to make friends with people in your physical environment? it typically starts with small talk. do you want to live in community? small talk. do you want to have the type of relationship with your neighbors where you can run over and borrow a battery for your smoke detector when it starts beeping at 10pm? small talk!! do you want leeway from your coworkers when you fuck up something small? you gotta be able to build a relationship and that's small talk, baybeee.
"but i don't need friends and i don't care about community!" okay, lone ranger, what about the people in your community who need you? "but i have social anxiety!" me too, bud! we simply must soldier on. making up lists of questions to ask people helps. and people are predisposed to be generous, i've found. even if you make some kind of mistake, what is this but the natural give and take of human interaction? nobody is perfect.
you were not put on this earth to live by yourself and then die. you need people and people need you. treat those around you with curiosity and generousness of spirit and you will gain so much goodwill in return.
When an ice storm takes out power in your entire county, you need your neighbors and your neighbors need you. People are not the enemy. Small talk is social lubricant. Always use lube!
