My ideas box

[My ideas box]

[kirinandvlindertje]

“transition poses some ethical questions. Such as, from what age should you be allowed to irreversibly change your body.“

This of course completely ignores the fact that puberty makes irreversible changes to your body. But let us just rephrase the question: “from what age do you gain bodily autonomy?” Now it gets very easy to answer: From the moment you’re fucking born.

[itsjustmesonoworries]

I’m sorry, I’m reblogging this twice in a row it is that important

[numinous-queer]

Stand up and say it again for the people in the back row. 

[drtanner]

This is all completely true and correct, of course, but on the topic of changes that irreversibly change a child’s body, prithee, go and talk to a fucking ballet dancer.

If you start ballet at 16, you are too old to ever expect to be able to do it seriously. If you start at 12 you’re too old. If you want to do ballet as a serious thing, as a career, you need to start at like eight years old or even younger, because your bones and joints need to be trained while they’re still flexible in order for you to be able to perform many of the required motions and stances of ballet. In particular, you need to be able to perform turnout of the hips, but all of your joints in your legs and feet will be affected, and this irreversibly changes your body.

And yet! Nobody talks about this as a negative thing! Little girls say they want to be ballet dancers, and if their parents have enough money, that’s what they get to be! Does it cause problems in later life? Yeah, sometimes! Often, even! But nobody talks about that because it’s a thing for cis people to do and so naturally it’s all fine!

Go and talk to a fucking ballet dancer.

[miniar]

Even common everyday sports do this.

If you play soccer for a few consecutive years sometime between the ages of 8 and 15 it will permanently affect your knees.

If you play a lot of soccer and for longer it will affect the entirety of legs, muscle and bone, and not for the better.

Almost every soccerplayer in the world has a shortening of the back of the thigh muscle that will cause pain as they age.
Most develop severe knee problems by the age of 30.

People don’t age out of sports in general around 30 because they’ve “passed their prime physical condition” in the sense that age has taken it’s toll, but in the sense that the sport itself has taken it’s toll.

And yet, no one is advocating against letting children play sports.

[kai-likes-puffins]

Even playing music as a child can alter your body. I can physically show you proof that I’ve been playing stringed instruments for the bulk of my life. When I spread my fingers out on my both my hands you can see a difference in how far my left hand and my right hand can reach. Ending up with arthritis or just general wrist and joint paint isn’t uncommon for musicians. Doing almost anything physical with your body from a young age can and will leave lasting effects on it, yet we still refuse to give bodily autonomy to trans kids.

[My ideas box]

[wooshofficial]

Girl what the fuck is going on in tumblr offices right now to let the decisions they just dropped be made

To the executive who made the decision and the RND staff that told said exec to make that decision: the only reason you’re winning the race right now is because you’re the tortoise. Don’t be the fucking hare.

[wooshofficial]

“Valley what the fuck are you talking about”

Today, tumblr staff posted a very long announcement on their blog, which you can find here.

It’s a long post that’s pretty hard to read, mostly because the entire thing reads like the writer was held at gunpoint by the zuck himself. (To the poor staff member who had to write this shitshow, I’m so sorry, may you get a raise for your efforts) Here are some of the main points:

• Tumblr (the company) is concerned about gaining more users from outside sources, such as other social media sites
• They’re planning on doing this by updating their advertising practices to the industry standard (basically, advertising tumblr the way Meta advertises Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, or the way Twitter advertises itself)
• They want to change how tumblr looks when you’re not logged in so that more people are convinced to sign up (they didn’t say how, exactly) but that’s not fully fleshed out yet
• Gave a very interesting statistic that the average tumblr user scrolls though 25 posts a day and did not specify wether or not this is good or bad (most likely because it’s fucking wrong)
• Plan to improve their “algorithmic ranking capabilities on all feeds” (which I don’t understand fully, but it sure fucking sounds like data mining)
• Plan to change thread mechanics again, but this time they’re collapsible
• Plan on putting new creators in the forefront by boosting their visibility on all dashes, and “improving the feedback loop for creators” (which once again I don’t understand fully)
• Plan on implementing spam filters when posts make rounds
• There’s a lot more RND on their end about to happen, regarding notifications, emails and staff-to-user communications
• Want to make emails more personal per creator (??????????)
• Backend stuff regarding site stability and performance on mobile

TL;DR: Tumblr is attempting to catch up with other social medias by becoming more like Twitter, even though the whole reason they had a massive influx of users recently was because of their lack of invasive, intrusive and vile business practices to sell themself.

Needless to say, people are fucking pissed. A lot of this is the exact opposite of what tumblr users want, and feels like the thing that’ll make this site finally crash and burn alongside the others. Which is terrifying!

So if staff are reading this, I’m gonna repeat my statement: the singular reason your site ended up being refuge in this time of dying socials is because the bar is in hell, and you barely jumped it by not having the bells and whistles that everyone’s tired of. Don’t trip while you’re still ahead.

[w3bpunk]

This is not at all what they're doing and spreading this panicked information is not helping.

Tumblr is making their dashboard controls open source so that the community has full control over how their dash is curated and can develop tools to customize it how they want. This was announced DAYS ago, but has been getting zero attention compared to people who only want to read everything as bad faith as possible.

Twitter would *never* make a move like this in a million years because keeping their model proprietary is too important to them to the point that they're suing Meta over Threads.

Tumblr are also extremely against data mining and their stance against it has cost them money they could have been making in order to make up for the deficit this site costs Automattic annually. Tumblr Live doesn't even "data mine" like the popular rumor states, because if you check what they collect it's username, age, and IP. The only identifying bit of this is IP, and if you use a VPN it will render that part moot.

I have a longer post about all this that includes my sources if you check the Tumblr Live tag on my blog. Look, I want Tumblr to improve too but the misinformation needs to be dealt with or we are never ever going to be able to give a scrap of useful feedback. Because asking them to stop doing something they're already not doing is flooding out all the actually useful critique.

[clockworkcrow]

further points:

• changing how tumblr looks when you’re not logged in is almost certainly about removing the “oooooops you’re not cleared to see that teehee! better sign up first!” they explicitly mention wanting people to actually see what tumblr is like before deciding to sign up. this is a good thing.
• the statistic is 25 posts per SESSION not per DAY which is completely normal and expected. i don’t see more than 25 posts most times i open tumblr (unless i’ve been gone for a while) because i don’t get that much new content on my dash OR because i don’t have time for more than that. they did not say it was good or bad that 25 is number, just that the first 25 posts should be good because that’s mostly what people see when they open their dash. and when half of it is your own posts or your mutual all reblogging the same post that makes it not an awesome experience. which is what they’re trying to fix.
• “algorithmic ranking” just means how well their algorithm uses the data it already has. you interact with x tag a lot so you would probably like more of x tag. tumblr is notoriously horrible about this rn because if you reblog one thing about that and then hop over to the for you tab it’s nothing but that thing. if they were going to mine more data they would be talking about gathering data. “algorithmic ranking” is literally just moving around cells in a spreadsheet of data they already have, there’s no conversation about gathering more data.
• improving the feedback loop for creators means getting them more reblogs/comment when they post original art/writing/content so they feel like it’s worth it to post to tumblr. which is what creators want.

“tldr”ing this as “tumblr is trying to become like twitter!” is ragebait nonsense. nothing about these changes make it “more like twitter” and i don’t know where you got half the stuff in this post except by willful misreading. i get that the language isn’t familiar to you and that you don’t understand it, which yeah is not great messaging on tumblr’s part and i wondered at them posting it (though super appreciate the EXTREMELY TRANSPARENCY which no other social media site is doing). but please don’t try and speak authoritatively on something you don’t understand, and especially don’t put a tldr that is a completely inaccurate summary of what’s going on.

[My ideas box]

[hoodoo-hoodlum]

I’m so mad because this worked

[britney2007spears]

help me roger

[whseking]

Do the damn thang Roger!

[cryoverkiltmilk]

River

Roger and the power of three point one million notes.

[My ideas box]

[libraryadvocates]

Yesterday I said that bookmobiles are an instant reblog. Today, I learned that rule also applies to book donkeys.

[rockpapertheodore]

BIBLIOBURRO

[shutupgitsor]

i think it’s really important that everyone knows that this man (Luis Soriano) has his own children’s books

and the donkeys are called Alfa and Beto, by the way. if you even care

[My ideas box]

[deoidesign]

A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)

Disclaimer: Though I have been using a cane for 6 years, I am not a doctor, nor am I by any means an expert. This guide is true to my experience, but there are as many ways to use a cane as there are cane users!

This guide will not include: White canes for blindness, crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs as I have no personal experience with these.

This is meant to be a general guide to get you started and avoid some common mishaps/misconceptions, but you absolutely should continue to do your own research outside of this guide!

ALT

The biggest recurring problem I've seen is using the cane on the wrong side. The cane goes on the opposite side of the pain! If your character has even-sided pain or needs it for balance/weakness, then use the cane in the non-dominant hand to keep the dominant hand free. Some cane users also switch sides to give their arm a rest!

A cane takes about 20% of your weight off the opposite leg. It should fit within your natural gait and become something of an extension of your body. If you need more weight off than 20%, then crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair is needed.

Putting more pressure on the cane, using it on the wrong side, or having it at the wrong height will make it less effective, and can cause long term damage to your body from improper pressure and posture. (Hugh Laurie genuinely hurt his body from years of using a cane wrong on House!)

(an animated GIF of a cane matching the natural walking gait. It turns red when pressure is placed on it.)

When going up and down stairs, there is an ideal standard: You want to use the handrail and the cane at the same time, or prioritize the handrail if it's only on one side. When going up stairs you lead with your good leg and follow with the cane and hurt leg together. When going down stairs you lead with the cane, then the good leg, and THEN the leg that needs help.

Realistically though, many people don't move out of the way for cane users to access the railing, many stairs don't have railings, and many are wet, rusty, or generally not ideal to grip.

In these cases, if you have a friend nearby, holding on to them is a good idea. Or, take it one step at a time carefully if you're alone.

Now we come to a very common mistake I see... Using fashion canes for medical use!

ALT

(These are 4 broad shapes, but there is INCREDIBLE variation in cane handles. Research heavily what will be best for your character's specific needs!)

The handle is the contact point for all the weight you're putting on your cane, and that pressure is being put onto your hand, wrist, and shoulder. So the shape is very important for long term use!

Knob handles (and very decorative handles) are not used for medical use for this reason. It adds extra stress to the body and can damage your hand to put constant pressure onto these painful shapes.

The weight of a cane is also incredibly important, as a heavier cane will cause wear on your body much faster. When you're using it all day, it gets heavy fast! If your character struggles with weakness, then they won't want a heavy cane if they can help it!

This is also part of why sword canes aren't usually very viable for medical use (along with them usually being knob handles) is that swords are extra weight!

However, a small knife or perhaps a retractable blade hidden within the base might be viable even for weak characters.

ALT

Bases have a lot of variability as well, and the modern standard is generally adjustable bases. Adjustable canes are very handy if your character regularly changes shoe height, for instance (gotta keep the height at your hip!)

Canes help on most terrain with their standard base and structure. But for some terrain, you might want a different base, or to forego the cane entirely! This article covers it pretty well.

Many cane users decorate their canes! Stickers are incredibly common, and painting canes is relatively common as well! You'll also see people replacing the standard wrist strap with a personalized one, or even adding a small charm to the ring the strap connects to. (nothing too large, or it gets annoying as the cane is swinging around everywhere)

ALT

(my canes, for reference)

If your character uses a cane full time, then they might also have multiple canes that look different aesthetically to match their outfits!

When it comes to practical things outside of the cane, you reasonably only have one hand available while it's being used. Many people will hook their cane onto their arm or let it dangle on the strap (if they have one) while using their cane arm, but it's often significantly less convenient than 2 hands. But, if you need 2 hands, then it's either setting the cane down or letting it hang!

For this reason, optimizing one handed use is ideal! Keeping bags/items on the side of your free hand helps keep your items accessible.

When sitting, the cane either leans against a wall or table, goes under the chair, or hooks onto the back of the chair. (It often falls when hanging off of a chair, in my experience)

When getting up, the user will either use their cane to help them balance/support as they stand, or get up and then grab their cane. This depends on what it's being used for (balance vs pain when walking, for instance!)

That's everything I can think of for now. Thank you for reading my long-but-absolutely-not-comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when writing or drawing a cane user!

Happy disability pride month! Go forth and make more characters use canes!!!

[My ideas box]

[jewish-sci-fi]

Hello Jewish sci-fi fans! I’ve officially made a discord for you!!

Judaism highly impacts the way I consume media, and I’ve found that goyim just don’t get it, even if they’re a fan of the same thing as me.

If this resonates with you, please join our server!!

Join the Jewish Sci-Fi Discord Server!

Check out the Jewish Sci-Fi community on Discord - hang out with 7 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Discord

[My ideas box]

[ejacutastic]

I DIDN’T LEARN ABOUT THIS IN DRIVING SCHOOL

[balalaikaboss]

Stop says the red light, go says the green

Wait says the yellow light, twinkling in between. 

KNEEL, SAYS THE DEMON LIGHT
WITH ITS EYE OF COAL 
SAURON KNOWS YOUR LICENSE PLATE 
AND STARES INTO YOUR SOUL

[sirtroyofbaker]

THIS IS ALWAYS FUNNY

[brightlotusmoon]

@irritatedlifeguard I agree with your tags.

[My ideas box]

[athingofvikings]

Moving Again

Just when I thought I had stable housing...

Short version: my spouse and I moved into the lower half of my in-laws' house a year and a half ago. We are now making active plans on moving out and completely cutting ties once we are out. (Apparently I'm a hypochondriac who is faking both Long Covid and a hernia, for starters, and it gets worse from there).

So we're hunting for housing. There are several points that render us unable to move out as quickly as we would otherwise--like the surgery and recovery period for the aforementioned hernia--but given everything, we can't stay here any longer.

Normally, this would be the point where I would ask for financial help, and while I won't turn any of that down, what I will do instead is as follows:

As noted by the pinned post on this tumblr, I'm trying to go pro as an author. I'm currently independently publishing my own work serially online, which you can find at @fractured-legacies, with weekly updates. I have a Patreon there.

So what I'm asking is please help me gain an audience. Give my original writing a try. Support it if you like it, or pass it on to people who you think will enjoy it.

And to seed that, here's the general blurb for the current novel being published, Imprudent:

The world of Nephaas is old, with deep histories lost and unknown to those who dwell there. It is a tumultuous world, with nations vying for influence and power, and with seasons whose power and fury shape the lives of those who live on the world.

Raavi ava Laagan is a young man, trained as a simple ironworker, facing his first winter as an adult. Months will pass before he sees the sun rise again, before his family wakes from their winter hibernation... and in that time, he and his companions will travel far, learn secrets long lost and forgotten, and attempt to stop events in motion that will result in the deaths of entire nations.

Thank you for your time and attention, and I deeply appreciate any help and support you can toss my way.

[My ideas box]

[saraswritingtipps]

Body type and shape

1. Lean: Having a slender and toned body with minimal body fat.

2. Muscular: Having well-developed muscles and a defined physique.

3. Slender: Having a thin and graceful body shape.

4. Curvy: Having an hourglass figure with well-defined curves, particularly in the hips and bust.

5. Athletic: Having a fit and muscular body, often associated with participation in sports or physical activities.

6. Petite: Being small and slender in stature, usually referring to height and overall body size.

7. Voluptuous: Having full and shapely curves, often emphasizing a larger bust, hips, and thighs.

8. Stocky: Having a compact and solid build with a sturdy appearance.

9. Thin: Having a slim and slender body shape with little body fat or muscle definition.

10. Well-proportioned: Having balanced and harmonious body proportions, with each body part in good proportion to the whole.

11. Toned: Having firm muscles and a defined physique resulting from regular exercise and strength training.

12. Chubby: Having a plump or rounded body shape, often with excess body fat.

13. Pear-shaped: Having a body shape where the hips and thighs are wider than the shoulders and bust.

14. Hourglass figure: Having a curvy body shape characterized by a well-defined waist and proportionate bust and hips.

15. Apple-shaped: Having a body shape where weight is primarily carried around the midsection, resulting in a broader waistline.

16. Broad-shouldered: Having wide and well-developed shoulders in comparison to the rest of the body.

17. Long-limbed: Having long and slender limbs in proportion to the body.

18. Stout: Having a sturdy and robust build, often characterized by a solid and thick physique.

19. Plump: Having a pleasantly full and rounded body shape, often indicating a higher percentage of body fat.

20. Tall and slender: Being tall in height and having a slim and elongated body shape.

[My ideas box]

[lyridmeteorshower]

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

• Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.
• Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

• Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.
• Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

• Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

• Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.
• The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top
• You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.
• Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up
• You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

• You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.

holy shit it's a poll

cool!

ooh clicky clicky button!! i wanna press it!! lemme press it!

you can add up to 10 options btw

See Results

• Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

• Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog
• Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.
• If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.
• You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"
• Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.
• Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.
• We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.
• Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say "I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd" and nobody gives a shit.

General Etiquette:

• Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.
• Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.
• Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it
• You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.
• Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.
• Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit
• You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.
• Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.
• Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.
• If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal
• Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

• Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension
• In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.
• You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!
• Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs
• Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

[bisexualbaker]

[Image one: The Preference switches from Settings. Image two: The "Share likes and/or following" switches from Settings. Image three: An example of Filtered Tags. End ID.]

Another note on Tumblr Live: You have to manually flip the switch to "on" every single week before Tumblr will register you flipping it back to "off". I'm certain this is annoying for everyone. There's at least one blog you can follow with weekly reminders for you to turn it off, but it's set for Tuesday, so you need to coordinate for that. (The good news there is that you can flip the switch again mid-week if you need to, and the timer will reset!)

[bisexualbaker]

Oh! One more very important thing!

Okay, under Settings again, scroll down to the bottom of the Settings options to where it says "Blogs". Select your account. This will take you to the place where you can edit your userpic, basic info, etc.

There's a toggle right under your username that says, "Enable custom theme".

Turn on this toggle.

That's it! That's all you have to do! You don't have to do anything else with your theme from there if you don't want to.

The important thing is that this will enable your blog to do the thing where it can be [username] dot tumblr dot com, instead of doing the thing where it's tumblr dot com slash [username], a thing which is much more annoying to navigate, I promise you. Your life will be better if you do this.