X-Tricks

I write things.  I know nothing about this tumblr stuff. Queer. An Old. Sex and kink positive. xtricks on dreamwidth and pillowfort

[escuerzoresucitado]

Grandma blows your brains out 🥰

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[bubobubosibericus]

[deathcomequickly]

Andrea Spencer Glassworks

Whoa.

[quiet-oracle]

[pidoop]

[theconcealedweapon]

[izukuwus]

Still reeling from the realization that bullet journaling was essentially created to be a disability aid and got legit fuckin gentrified

[izukuwus]

Like I'm at work and don't have the time to properly organize my thoughts atm but like.

-bullet journalling was invented by a man with a learning disability (99% sure it was ADHD but his website now just says learning disability so I can't be 100%) as a system for organizing his life/way to work WITH his learning disability

-the general concept is bullet point the important things you need to do and use a simple system of symbols to mark whether it's done, rescheduled, cancelled, etc. with very little fanfare, keeping it all in one notebook so you know where to easily find the information at a glance

-people pick it up and it starts getting popular

-bullet journaling becomes an aesthetic movement largely populated by white neurotypicals

-bullet journaling has turned into creating an extremely pretty notebook that has some function, but largely depends on complicated decoration and aesthetic function that takes more time to set up than is tenable for the people it was created for

-new entries to bullet journaling feel pressure to shop at particular stores, use particular brands, purchase lots of stationery purely for its aesthetic value, and prioritize the artistry of the pages rather than the information being stored on them

-people who would massively benefit from the original system can only really find information on it from members of the aesthetic movement. There is now a barrier to entry for ppl with ADHD and other similar conditions, as bullet journaling now requires a focus and motivation to start that these same people often lack or struggle to maintain consistently

-bullet journaling is no longer a disability aid and has become an aesthetic movement largely for middle class white neurotypicals, pushing out the people who the system was created for to begin with

[bibookmerm]

This is the original guide from the person who made bullet journalling. Super simple. Not at all high maintenance.

It was eye-opening to rewatch this after getting used to bullet journal meaning "work of highly decorative art you might journal in if it doesn't detract from the decoration" everywhere online.

[cryptic-eccentric]

Oh my god we actually did it.

[depsidase]

[depsidase]

[labete-du-gevaudan]

Swedish Chef was on Masterchef Junior this week and he has human hands and it makes me really uncomfortable. 

[nihilistwife]

when the texture packs don’t all load together

[czechs-and-holdings-deactivated]

The Swedish Chef has human hands in every video he’s in? 

That’s part of the joke. 

[takethistoyourstardust]

He had human hands on The Muppet Show.

[labete-du-gevaudan]

I was a Bear in the Big Blue house kid. I never watched the Muppets. A puppet with people hands is freaky to me. I just want my bear and his big blue house.

[apathetic-revenant]

can confirm, the Swedish Chef (almost) always has human hands. don’t know why. he’s an anomaly that way. 

fun additional bit of trivia: most Live-hand Muppets (that is, ones that have articulated glove hands instead of the hands being moved by rods) are performed with the primary puppeteer doing the head and the left hand while a secondary puppeteer, usually a less experienced one, performs the right hand, a task typically known as ‘right-handing’. (the puppeteers use their dominant hands for the head, so for most of them their remaining hand will be the left. I don’t know if they reverse the process and have people left-handing for left-handed puppeteers.) looks like this:

the Swedish Chef is one of the exceptions to that rule, though, because his skits required a lot more complicated hand movement that needed better coordination, so with him one person would work the head and one would do both hands; they also did that for things a character playing the piano. that added complexity might be why he doesn’t have glove hands, plus the fact that he already looks a lot more human than most Muppets anyway. but I don’t really know.

…that was…probably more information than you wanted. sorry. 

[labete-du-gevaudan]

I JUST LEARNED SO MUCH ABOUT PUPPETS. Thank you.

[spiroandthelacktones]

Also fun fact when they put an older swedish chef puppet into the Jim Henson museum exhibit he didn’t have any hands cause he was a live hand puppet, so the museum called up Frank oz and had him actually make casts of his hands that they used to make display hands for it

[certified-muppet-posts]

certified muppets post

[fuckyeahsnackables]

Y'all are missing the best part. You know how the Swedish Chef is always throwing shit in the air and failing to catch things? That’s because Frank Oz started doing that to fuck with Jim (bc as noted above, a puppet with two practical hands is pretty unusual). And Jim would have to react or try to catch things that were raining down on his head from above. And from there it became A Thing, every bit as iconic as the Swedish Chef speaking gibberish.

[animentality]

[futileexercise]

[cryptotheism]

hi yes hello what the fuck is metrosexual lmfao

It's hard to explain to zoomers just how insanely homophobic the early 2000s were. If you were male, and like, washed your hair regularly, people would call you a faggot.

So, dudes who washed their hair and wore button ups developed the term "metrosexual" which meant "I care about my appearance but I am attracted to women and don't have sex with men."

[cryptotheism]

And not just "oh people called you gay to be mean" like they literally thought you were homosexual and hiding it. Women would literally be like "damn, I was super attracted to him, but I heard he wore shorts more than twice in a week, so I guess he must like men."

[milf--adjacent]

To this day, I still cannot explain how for my entire formative years women literally chose to date men who were rude, mean, lazy, and literally smelled like ass because if their boyfriend cared about his personal hygiene, it meant he was a closeted homosexual like... And kept on choosing it? For decades? Who tortures themself for appearances like that besides like legit queer people and sleeper agents?

[hyperlexichypatia]

And women had to Look For The Signs of their boyfriends' secret gayness, because people were absolutely fixated on the idea that gay men were constantly conniving and scheming to deceptively entrap honorable straight women into sex and/or relationships. Because you know how gay men will do anything to get sex with women.

[garmbreak1]

great news, these attitudes are back under the banner of The Ick

[zellah7]

bye i love this

[landunderthewave]

Man: Siri, what is 1 trillion to the tenth power? Siri: Calculation. The answer is one zero zero zero zero zero [continuing] Man: *starts beatboxing to the rhythm. Woman 1: *joins in* Woman 2: *starts singing to the rhythm*

[blonde-vulcan-deactivated201608]

This is sO GOOD

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[all-hail-the-antler-king]

Like to charge reblog to cast