May 2025

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

demilypyro:

I think people on here operate on a very weird definition of “conventionally attractive” where anything humanoid is already too normal for them. When society at large is like “if you’re not skinny and white and able bodied and cisgender you’re basically unfuckable”

People on here fetishized Baldywick Clamberspatch, if that can be seen as the baseline for “conventionally attractive” then it’s easy to understand why this site wants to fuck Wheatley

tyrannosaurus-trainwreck:

fairycosmos:

“abortion is nobody’s first choice” actually i know multiple people whose first thought upon finding out they were pregnant was getting an abortion. and when they did, it was a healthy normal medical procedure that they hold no guilt over as far as i’m aware. people hate to see it but that’s what the process can and should look like

Every time I’ve heard something along the lines of “abortion is nobody’s first choice,” it’s in a full-spectrum context.  

The people who don’t want to be pregnant would generally prefer not to have gotten pregnant in the first place, which means:

• comprehensive, medically accurate, age appropriate sex ed on an ongoing basis until adulthood
• affordable, available, effective contraception in the form(s) of their choosing
• recognition of reproductive coercion as a form of intimate partner violence and appropriate support for people experiencing it

The people who are open to a(nother) child, but don’t have the means to support one, may prefer to not have gotten pregnant in the first place or may prefer to carry to term, which means all of the above plus:

• comprehensive, medically accurate reproductive education made available prior to pregnancy
• affordable, available, accessible childcare
• affordable, available, accessible prenatal and post-partum medical care
• robust parental leave policies and protections for pregnant and immediately post-partum workers
• affordable, available, child-friendly housing

The people who really wanted to be pregnant, and wanted to carry to term, but have found themselves experiencing disastrous personal circumstances, may prefer to have an abortion or may prefer to try carrying to term, which means all that plus:

• recognition that pregnancy is when many people are first subjected to abuse by their partners and comprehensive support for pregnant people experiencing domestic violence
• affordable, available, accessible services for special needs children
• robust support for people who are disabled by their pregnancy
• affordable, available, accessible fertility support for couples with a high chance or history of incompatible-with-life embryos

If you want an abortion, you should be able to get it safely, quickly, and without apology, but the list of ways this country is completely and utterly failing to allow people full reproductive autonomy is practically endless.  It’s also not an accident that the people salivating over how to make abortion bans as total and damaging as humanly possible also oppose every fucking one of the points listed above.

Breaking the anti-choice cult’s deathgrip on our politics is the only way we’re going to start improving everyone’s lives no matter what they want to do with their gonads.

lastvalyrian:

i-give-you-a-fish:

gimmick-thief:

xxx-angie:

gimmick-thief:

scepty-ssb:

gimmick-thief:

i-give-chess-pieces-to-people:

tsunderrated:

ushirominya:

tsunderrated:

hey genuine question why do people put that fucking water filter over screenshots. just post them. fuck you.

no. get submerged

ALT

[ID in alt text]

Imagine having your stolen gimmick stolen

imagine having your stolen stolen gimmick stolen

imagine getting your stolen stolen stolen gimmick stolen

imagine getting your stolen gimmick holen stolen gmiick mahine stolen gimmick golen stimmick holen

You get a Rainbow Trout

Oncorhynchus mykiss

facebook has bots saying random garbage that nobody cares about to each other but on tumblr that work is still done lovingly by hand

catboybiologist:

elphrackojr:

catboybiologist:

catboybiologist:

There’s like a million interesting conversations that can be had about the trans experience that collectively, both ourselves and cis people are like three fucking giant leaps behind in terms of understanding and are too clouded by bad faith takes that they’re impossible to actually talk about

Okay so here’s two things that I think are dog whistles and red flags with no further nuance or context, but have a lot of value in discussing:

• “You need dysphoria to be trans”. I actually, kinda genuinely think this is true, WITH THE KEY FUCKING DISCLAIMER that dysphoria is not a diagnosis, expressions of dysphoria are not intrinsically tied to medicalization, and the definition of dysphoria is WAY more extensive than any current perception. Eg, a lack of “euphoria”, or happy moments, and a reduced ability to feel them, is something that, imo, can be described as dysphoria. This is mostly a linguistic thing, but I think its a good explanation for a recurring phenomena I’ve noted: trans people who were comforted by the “you don’t need dysphoria to be trans” line pretransition, but later realized that their baseline mental state was actually dysphoric, they just had no standard for analyzing that.
• Being sexualized from a REALLY early age as a cis woman is genuinely horrific. It’s a different experience, but I actually do think it has a transfemme analogue- being rapidly sexualized during early transition while an adult, but without nearly as extensive of a support network for it or survival techniques for it. Genuinely a really interesting conversation to have with cis women where you both start learning extremely helpful things from each other. But, “the unique traumas of girlhood” is way too often used as a TERF dogwhistle.

And lots of others, but those are two that have been on my mind recently.

Reminds me of the whole missed possibility of learning if there’s a nuanced answer to “nature vs nurture” for sexual attraction. We all had to get in line behind people being born gay or not because of the legitimate horrors of conversion therapy and it was a decent compromise to have made culturally. However it’s something that could be incredibly interesting to study and figure out how attraction actually forms if it weren’t for the evils of how some people would seek to use that information.

yuuupp

See also: the instant shutdown some people have towards the idea that HRT can change your sexuality.

starlightomatic:

theunicorncomic-blog:

infectiouspiss:

kunaiman:

infectiouspiss:

the world needs more dykes

I keep forgetting that this means lesbian. I instinctively think of dams when I hear this word. Like. Okay yeah. Posts made by beavers I guess.

lesbians can we make this post about beavers for a couple hours every day? like 3-5am or something? i think that would be really cool thank you

I mean, we all know that dykes love beavers

ransomnote:

ransomnote:

my personal argument for open borders is really simple it just boils down to “i believe restricting human movement and barring certain people from certain places on this earth is a human rights violation”

i mean this. everyone should be able to walk freely between mexico and the united states, fuck an ID, fuck a passport, fuck a visa. it’s land, continuous, uninterrupted land. the soil on one side of the fense has the same geologic makeup of the soil on the other. we drew this invisible line in the sand, we can wipe it away with our feet together. it is well past time the world organizes en masse for our freedom of movement.

thotsandpreyers:

the-haiku-bot:

trashfolk:

Game Changer : Season 7, Episode 1
The Return of the King

Game Changer : Season

7, Episode 1 The

Return of the King

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

derinthescarletpescatarian:

mildlyautisticsuperdetective:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

ace-and-ranty:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

ginbenci:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

thingsidothingsidont:

mikkeneko:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

there’s an extremely niche plot in romance fiction wherein our invariably heterosexual leads fall in love after a night of passion leads to an unplanned pregnancy and they’re now bound together by an impending child. I cast no judgment on anyone who enjoys this, but since I’m an evil gay and this is my personal nightmare scenario I want to see a zany romance novel premised on the opposite resolution: a couple falls in love while on a whirlwind roadtrip to obtain a legal abortion

“oh but along the way they realize they actually do want to raise the child together and ultimately keep the baby” no actually they successfully get the abortion and then they get chili dogs or something

neither of them want kids and it’s not because they’re immature or selfish or afraid of commitment or irresponsible or whatever, they just don’t want to be parents and that’s not a flaw they overcome. obviously they have other issues because there has to be some kind of arc to this story but deciding to keep a pregnancy that was unplanned and unwanted isn’t the solution.

some of you are very determined for this to not be a romance, to which I politely say shut the fuck up and get out of my sandbox. these idiots are going on an abortion roadtrip and they are falling in love on the way so help me god.

I genuinely am floored by how hard of a time people are having with the very simple premise “two characters go on a roadtrip to get an abortion and fall in love with each other”

each other. each other each other each other. a person who is pregnant and the person who got them pregnant fall in love with each other on the way to terminate the pregnancy.

there’s something about all the “okay, but what about this unexpected twist!” replies that is pinging weirdly on my brain and I think it’s like…

the point of the ‘twist’ in storytelling is that you’re maintaining interest or raising the states by subverting a baseline state. taking something expected and doing the unexpected with it.

but the scenario as OP describes it, where two people enter in a romance but don’t want and take steps not to have kids, is… not a baseline. this doesn’t happen in media. in all standard instances it’s either they aren’t in love OR they are in love and decide to have the kid. the notion of people wanting to be romantically involved but not wanting kids, the notion of seeing abortion as desirable/necessary healthcare, that already IS the subversion.

the original premise doesn’t need to be spiced up with an Unexpected Twist because it is the unexpected twist. and it’s not going to be boring or played our or cliched until there’s a dozen stories like it and the idea of un-dramatically going to get a healthcare procedure done with someone who loves you is normalized.

i hate to go ummmm, actually - but, ummmm, actually, the movie you’re looking for is Obvious Child with Jenny Slate.

SPOILERS AHEAD

She’s a comedian, he is a good boy, they have a one night stand, she gets pregnant but she doesn’t want the baby. They start spending time together and are really into each other. She realizes that he is a great guy and that they want to be with each other.
She gets her abortion on Valentine’s Day, and even though he is not happy at first, they both realize it’s for the best and he accompanies her on the day. By the end, they are together (maybe for now, maybe forever).

It’s a great comedy and the two leads have great chemistry.

where’s the road trip

In a just world with good health care, the road trip isn’t necessary

Like “going on a road trip to a pharmacy” shouldn’t be a thing. If they have time to fall in love on the way to the abortion provider, medical treatment is too far away

(Though i concede roadtrip tropes are fun)

okay, in a just world that’s true. in the world and country where I actually live, many people do not have easy access to abortion services. in the US there are in fact many people who would have to drive pretty far to get an abortion. hence the plot I’m pitching here.

Where’s the OP of the “no make up” post. We have found someone who has suffered as they suffered.

you aren’t gonna believe this but

that was also me

aren’t you also the op of the ‘why would you pin all your little gay hopes on taylor swift’ post? congratulations on being the person having the worst possible pvp experience on tumblr

OP is cursed somehow I think

foone:

drunkenauthor:

foone:

Man I wish it was easier to be a fan of DIY electronics/electronics repair without being racist to Chinese people

Please explain, I love hearing about niche drama

It’s just a pattern in a lot of youtubers where they’ll call parts “chinesium” or complain about “cheap Chinese parts” alongside talking about how they got two of these FUCKING COMPUTERS for 4$, shipped across an ocean.

And it’s like… Whenever there’s a problem, they could just refer to the parts being cheap, or badly made, or whatever. There’s no reason to specifically blame China/the Chinese, except for the fact it’s become a standard slur in the electronics guys vocabulary.

Especially in a world where most electronics are made in China. Where is your MacBook made, again?

But it’s only “Chinese” if it’s cheap and crap? That’s bullshit. Especially when you’re the one who went to a Chinese store and asked for their cheapest crap.

bacony-cakes:

op turned off reblogs but i wanted this on my blog so i screenshotted it

boomstab-papa:

the-barefoot-hatter:

zeezeepearl:

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don’t think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it’s the thinking millennial’s astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don’t think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR’s bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn’t to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn’t give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don’t know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you’re above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don’t have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

#copied from prev:#harry potter was not a covert attempt to brainwash children into fascism#they’re very milquetoast 1990s british liberal#she used to fucking hate the tories#and yes there WERE some tells in her books that she had ye olde unexamined biases

#but in the wake of her going off the deep end people have twisted that into#“she was always a hateful bigot and hp was actually a nefarious attempt to corrupt children into sharing her bigotry”

#and like#no#she was once a well-meaning fairly progressive normie who just didn’t think too hard about her own background assumptions about the world#and then she got famous and then she got older and she got radicalized by people who targeted her on purpose because she had#enough money and cultural caché to turn into real influence

#and she was completely unprepared to defend her worldview from people who were telling her that her knee-jerk reaction was always right#and anyone who said otherwise was not only a jerk but also a dangerous villain who wanted to hurt her and other innocent women and girls

#and y'all are not nearly as immune to those tactics as a lot of you think you are

#fuck the ghoul that jkr has become but the story of how she got here is not the story of a crypto-fascist who made it into mainstream#it is the cautionary tale of a normal decent person who fell down a bad rabbithole and got swallowed up by a hate movement

#re-writing history so you can pretend she was always evil won’t protect you from sharing her fate

#you have to put in the effort to interrogate your own biases and your own knee-jerk disgust reactions#you have to take a minute every so often to step back and CHECK if you have ended up in an echo chamber bubble and touch grass a little

#because radicalization doesn’t happen overnight and it can happen to any of us#it’s very easy to let yourself believe that you’re Correct and anyone who disagrees with you is Obviously Evil

#you have to force yourself to double-check that notion from time to time and to hang onto EXACTLY what it is that makes the other side wron#you can’t just say “well they’re conservatives so obviously they’re evil” because that is how you wind up at “these men are hurting youn#’‘girls by PRETENDING to be women in order to take advantage of the protections feminists have spent decades fighting for! and we shouldn’t#’'even be surprised really - men are awful after all. all they do is TAKE from women and PREY ON young girls. we all know this from our own#’'bad experiences with men. and we were right to hate them for it! you see!!” and whoops now you’re a fucking terf

#it’s easy it’s so easy it’s so fucking easy and i promise you i PROMISE you there is a hate group out there who has your fucking number#no matter how good and progressive and leftist you think you are there is SOMETHING that could radicalize you into hate if you let it#there is an argument about how certain people are Just Fundamentally Evil that would appeal to you and make sense to you

This is a very good warning. If you meet someone telling you “your knee-jerk reaction was always right, and anyone who said otherwise was not only a jerk but also a dangerous villain”, watch the fuck out

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

noctumsolis:

You know when you have some weird experience that, although absolutely real and relatively mundane, defies explanation and can not be replicated as well as having gone undocumented?

You can tell people about it later, but never prove it? Never share the experience?

It’s a weird kind of loneliness and the older I get the more I resent it, because those memories will die with their keeper.

So what the hell, let’s share, yeah?

Keep reading

This isn’t really extremely mundane, but it is a piece of personal headcanon that I really can’t tell people about until I’m sure that they aren’t just gonna write me off as a wacko.

So one time I took a ride in my friend’s 1971 VW microbus. Since it was my first time in the van, he was telling me about it, about the previous owner Earl who had died and left it to his kids, about how the kids could never get it to run properly but because of that he was able to buy it for a song. He told me about how Earl’s kids swore that dad’s ghost had haunted the van after he died, because it was his baby and he never let them drive it. Also while on that ride, we got pulled over (allegedly for not changing lanes for a cop who had pulled somebody ELSE over, but really because it was a neon green VW Bus with rainbow hubcaps and Grateful Dead bears dancing in the windows and we were in rural Illinois, a very corn-fed conservative area) and handcuffed and searched (we obviously did have drugs on us) and left stranded on the side of the road for over an hour in February while they tried to decide if it was worth doing the paperwork of arresting six people for a pipe and a gram of weed. In the end, the driver got a DWI and a paraphernalia charge, but I got something a little stranger.

The next day, I woke up with a beet-red handprint on my forearm that didn’t go away for several hours. And, try as I might, I couldn’t quite get my other hand to grip my arm in the same way without seriously tweaking my wrist in a way that definitely would have woken me up if I’d done it in my sleep. But after that, I seemed to have borderline-supernatural good luck in minor events. I’d get pulled over (again, with a car full of drugs) only to be warned that my headlight was out. I’d blast through yellow lights just before they turned red. My acid was never bunk, my shrooms were always powerful and benevolent, I’d never wait for trains, bands that never went on tour would play special events in my city right after I first heard them. Little things that nonetheless gave me an incredible quality of living in my early to mid 20s. I was still broke, I still couldn’t get laid to save my life, but I was having such a good time that it didn’t matter.

And then one day, years later, I was in the depths of extreme nicotine withdrawal (don’t vape, kids) and I rolled a “cigarette” out of random crap from my spice cabinet, including sage. It didn’t help. It just made my tongue go numb and my legs wobbly.

Now, I’m not really one for the supernatural. At the time, I was a pretty obnoxious Reddit atheist. I didn’t believe in an afterlife, I didn’t really believe in ghosts or spirits at all. But two months after that, I jumped headfirst into an abusive relationship that would completely alter the trajectory of the following decade. I think Earl’s ghost liked the cut of my drug rug after that first trip in the VW and decided to hitch a ride with me and help me out whenever a light touch was needed. And when I smoked that cigarette, the sage made him fuck off, and thus robbed me of his wise old hippie voice in my ear saying things like “this dude is literally violating the Geneva Convention at you, you should probably break up with him”

You have an interesting life

the-carrot-clarinet:

squareallworthy:

pip-says-hi:

squareallworthy:

squareallworthy:

guy who does unboxing videos but he only talks about the boxes

“Hey, everyone, welcome back. Our first box today is a Uline nine by five by four. Single piece of clear shipping tape over the top, two inch, and the UPS label nicely centered. No edge tape, and you know, that’s fine. This box is pretty light, I’d say under a pound, and taped edges don’t really add much stability here. Let’s open it up and see what we’ve got for dunnage…okay, half-inch bubble wrap, that’s unusual in a box of this size.”

Sometimes a post throws into perspective just how much niche knowledge you possess.

I read this, and I can tell from the “review” that the package was NOT shipped by a professional.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch. It’s MUCH easier to seal boxes with, especially around the edges. Two inch is what you can buy from office depot or lowe’s. It’s fine for moving house, but it’s definitely not professional grade.

Two: no edge tape. Just seal your edges, people. UPS basically plays soccer with your packages. Even the light ones, just on principal, give them the structural support you can offer.

Three: centered label. Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible! And put it to the side if you can’t! Visibility!

Also, the reviewer may be accustomed to getting a lot of boxes, but I don’t think they were a professional shipper, either. Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused, whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling, the condition of the package post shipping, and whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label. AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

I don’t know what to say other than “your experiences are not universal,” because I do shipping and receiving at a machine shop for a living, I see packages sent by professional shippers all the time, and I disagree with you on just about every point.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch.

Nope. For packages I see, two inch packing tape is the norm. Today I had one package with three-inch water-activated reinforced paper tape and one (from Uline) with 2.75" packing tape. Everything else used 2" packing tape. Yes, it’s exactly the same kind of stuff that you can get at Office Depot or Lowe’s, and people use it because it gets the job done.

Two: no edge tape.

Not uncommon for small, light packages. I just don’t see box failures on packages under a pound where more tape would have helped. Where I do see failures is overloaded boxes, thirty pounds and up, where the corrugate simply ripped, and no amount of tape would have saved the package.

PSA: please don’t fill an 8x8x6 single-wall box with machine screws and expect it to arrive intact. Fastenal, I’m looking at you.

Three: centered label.

Label on top is standard. I had only one box today with the label on the side, and all the rest on top.

Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled

Your package will get manhandled, regardless of where you put the label. Plan on it.

to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible!

Heck no! I expect labels to be on top and that’s the first place I look for them. If it’s on the side, that’s potentially four other places I have to look, which is a pain in the ass when I’m busy. And I’m always busy.

UPS, incidentally, says you should put the label on the largest surface. For the packages I get, that’s usually the top.

Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused,

Okay, that’s legit. I do see a fair number of reused boxes.

whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling

Hazmats aren’t common enough to mention it every time when there isn’t one present. (My hazmats are usually solvents or paint, and that’s not something I get every day.)

the condition of the package post shipping

Not usually noteworthy. My internal monolog (which is what the above fanciful review is based on) doesn’t bother to mention it unless something unusual happened to the box.

whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label

Although I ship just as many packages as I receive, if not more, it never would have occurred to me to check. And I don’t have a scale in the receiving department, so it would be guesswork anyway.

AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

Which everyone uses. There’s not much need to comment when it’s far and away the most common type of tape.

Perhaps things have been different for you, but this is how it is in the manufacturing industry.

the-carrot-clarinet:

squareallworthy:

pip-says-hi:

squareallworthy:

squareallworthy:

guy who does unboxing videos but he only talks about the boxes

“Hey, everyone, welcome back. Our first box today is a Uline nine by five by four. Single piece of clear shipping tape over the top, two inch, and the UPS label nicely centered. No edge tape, and you know, that’s fine. This box is pretty light, I’d say under a pound, and taped edges don’t really add much stability here. Let’s open it up and see what we’ve got for dunnage…okay, half-inch bubble wrap, that’s unusual in a box of this size.”

Sometimes a post throws into perspective just how much niche knowledge you possess.

I read this, and I can tell from the “review” that the package was NOT shipped by a professional.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch. It’s MUCH easier to seal boxes with, especially around the edges. Two inch is what you can buy from office depot or lowe’s. It’s fine for moving house, but it’s definitely not professional grade.

Two: no edge tape. Just seal your edges, people. UPS basically plays soccer with your packages. Even the light ones, just on principal, give them the structural support you can offer.

Three: centered label. Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible! And put it to the side if you can’t! Visibility!

Also, the reviewer may be accustomed to getting a lot of boxes, but I don’t think they were a professional shipper, either. Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused, whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling, the condition of the package post shipping, and whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label. AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

I don’t know what to say other than “your experiences are not universal,” because I do shipping and receiving at a machine shop for a living, I see packages sent by professional shippers all the time, and I disagree with you on just about every point.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch.

Nope. For packages I see, two inch packing tape is the norm. Today I had one package with three-inch water-activated reinforced paper tape and one (from Uline) with 2.75" packing tape. Everything else used 2" packing tape. Yes, it’s exactly the same kind of stuff that you can get at Office Depot or Lowe’s, and people use it because it gets the job done.

Two: no edge tape.

Not uncommon for small, light packages. I just don’t see box failures on packages under a pound where more tape would have helped. Where I do see failures is overloaded boxes, thirty pounds and up, where the corrugate simply ripped, and no amount of tape would have saved the package.

PSA: please don’t fill an 8x8x6 single-wall box with machine screws and expect it to arrive intact. Fastenal, I’m looking at you.

Three: centered label.

Label on top is standard. I had only one box today with the label on the side, and all the rest on top.

Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled

Your package will get manhandled, regardless of where you put the label. Plan on it.

to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible!

Heck no! I expect labels to be on top and that’s the first place I look for them. If it’s on the side, that’s potentially four other places I have to look, which is a pain in the ass when I’m busy. And I’m always busy.

UPS, incidentally, says you should put the label on the largest surface. For the packages I get, that’s usually the top.

Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused,

Okay, that’s legit. I do see a fair number of reused boxes.

whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling

Hazmats aren’t common enough to mention it every time when there isn’t one present. (My hazmats are usually solvents or paint, and that’s not something I get every day.)

the condition of the package post shipping

Not usually noteworthy. My internal monolog (which is what the above fanciful review is based on) doesn’t bother to mention it unless something unusual happened to the box.

whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label

Although I ship just as many packages as I receive, if not more, it never would have occurred to me to check. And I don’t have a scale in the receiving department, so it would be guesswork anyway.

AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

Which everyone uses. There’s not much need to comment when it’s far and away the most common type of tape.

Perhaps things have been different for you, but this is how it is in the manufacturing industry.

qqueenofhades:

prokopetz:

redsparrow12:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old “the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power” route, but it’s almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren’t keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn’t one of those “well, it’s okay when we do it” deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

It wasn’t just the hoity-toity ritual magic stuff, either. Popular media often frames a fundamental opposition between the Church and practitioners of the Old Ways™, but on the ground, any given medieval European community’s foremost practitioner of traditional folk magic was likely to be the village priest. And again, they very much were not supposed to be doing this. There were some very pointed letters going around reminding people to cut that shit out, not that we’re naming any names, Jeremy, and no, “if you invoke the saints first it’s fine” is not going to fly with the bishop.

I feel like a lot of folks in the notes are missing a critical piece of context here because they’re not clear on what the Church’s official position toward magic actually was during the Medieval period.

In brief, the idea that magic is a. real and b. Satanic was not the party line for the greater part of the Middle Ages. Obviously the particulars varied both regionally and over time, but for the most part, the official position of the Church was that there is no power but God’s and magic is fake. The Church’s principal objection to the practices of divination, spirit-binding, etc. was that they were fraudulent, not that they imperilled one’s soul. Sometimes this was even carried to the point that accusations of witchcraft would result in the accuser getting in trouble rather than the accused; after all, if your neighbour is pretending to do wizard shit, that’s fraud, but if you actually believe your neighbour is capable of wizard shit, that’s heresy!

The hardline “magic is the work of Satan” stance that most folks are thinking of when they think of magic and the Church wasn’t particularly widespread until very late in the Medieval period, and is really more characteristic of the post-Reformation era – which adds an extra layer of hilarity to the aforementioned local clergy doing wizard shit, because from the perspective of their superiors, the problem was less “oh no, our priests are consorting with Satan” and more “god fucking damn it, our priests keep scamming people with this wizard shit”.

The Catholic Church, desperately penning their 500th letter to local clergy:

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP TELLING PEOPLE MAGIC IS REAL

The really funny part is that, by all accounts, some of the priests involved didn’t even want to be doing wizard shit. Allegedly, they more or less got pressured into it by their congregations, who expected wizard shit of them and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

I’ve been summoned by @artielu to vet this post, and I’m happy to confirm that it is, in fact, fairly accurate and does represent many of the ways in which medieval people did (and did not) think about gender, witchcraft, religion, magic, and practice. I’ve written quite a bit on this topic before, probably back when I was teaching a class on magic and the supernatural in the Middle Ages, but it’s been a while.

The boring stereotypical Bad Middle Ages take is that medieval people were all howling misogynists and thus were burning Female Witches (and also midwives, out of an idea that medieval people saw all female-led intellectual practice as inherently bad, which is also uh, questionable) at the stake left and right. As I have carped about many times, Witch Trials ™ as most people think of them were decidedly an early modern invention. The idea of witchcraft as both a) real and b) specifically and evilly female was also in fact a very late medieval invention; it was most explicitly codified in the infamous Malleus maleficarum of 1485. However its author, Heinrich Kramer, was already a raging misogynist and had been chased out of his parish the year before when for some reason, people got tired of him randomly accusing their wives and daughters of witchcraft. The Malleus is well known as a “witch hunting handbook,” but people then tend to generalize its late 15th-century conclusions, written by one tiresome misogynist, as completely representative of The Middle Ages Everywhere. The Malleus also contains some anti-sodomitic polemicals, so there are just a whole stew of gender, queer, and other anxieties being represented here in a late medieval context. See i.e.:

• Bailey, M. D., ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 76 (2001), 960-90.
• Bailey, M.D., ‘The feminization of magic and the emerging idea of the female witch in the late Middle Ages’, Essays in Medieval Studies 19 (2002), 120-134
• Broedel, H.P., ‘To preserve the manly form from so vile a crime: ecclesiastical anti-sodomitic rhetoric and the gendering of witchcraft in the Malleus Maleficarum’, Essays in Medieval Studies 19 (2002), 136-148
• Broedel, H.P., The Malleus Maleficarumand the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)
• Harley, D. ‘Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch’, Social History of Medicine, 3 (1990), 1-26
• Katajala-Peltomaa, S. ‘A good wife? Demonic Possession and Discourses of Gender in Late Medieval Culture’, in Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by M.G. Muravyeva and R.M. Tovio (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), pp. 73-88
• Stephens, W., ‘Witches who steal penises: impotence and illusion in the Malleus Maleficarum’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998), 495-529

It’s true that some of the most dedicated practitioners of ritual magic, and scholars and conservationists of magical texts, were monks, churchmen, and other religious figures. Some of them started from the position that God possessed the only supernatural power and any claim of other magic was wrong, but many others did believe that magical power was accessible from a variety of sources, even as this interacted uneasily with related notions of heresy, religion, blasphemy, and (demonic) sin. This represented the complex and shifting interaction between institutional Catholic and traditional/folk magic beliefs, which were never fully assimilated or “erased.” It was in fact also popular among laypeople, as magical amulets or charms were highly valued for their supposedly protective capacities. Magic and ritual magic was also widely used in medicine and yes, for sex (people have always been people etc. etc.). See i.e.:

• Bailey, M. D., Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy and Reform in the Later Middle Ages (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2003)
• Boureau, A., Satan the Heretic: The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West, trans. by Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2006)
• Collins, D., ed., Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West (New York, NY and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
• Fanger, C., ed. Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (Stroud: Sutton, 1998)
• Flint, V. I. J., The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
• Kieckhefer, R., Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• Kieckhefer, R. ‘Erotic Magic in Medieval Europe’, in Sex in the Middle Ages, ed. by J. Salisbury (London and New York, NY: Garland, 1991), 30-55
• Olsan, L.T., ‘Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice’, Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 343-66
• Page, S. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2013)
• Rider, C. ‘Danger, stupidity and infidelity: magic and discipline in John Bromyard’s Summa for Preachers’, Studies in Church History, 43 (2007), 191-20

I could go on with quite a bit more, but the point is: there is an extensive scholarly literature on this topic, and any depiction of magical and supernatural beliefs in the Middle Ages, especially in popular media, is often the laziest imaginable shorthand for “they all hated women, thought they were witches, and burned anyone who didn’t believe in the all-powerful Catholic church.” Yet again, this also does vary by time period, as The Middle Ages are not one single undifferentiated block. A twelfth-century author is far more likely to scoff at the credulous fools who think magic is real or can actually compare to the power of God, whereas the early-modern authors, influenced by Kramer, will do far more of the stereotypical “witchcraft is a particularly female-gendered thing and also real, satanic, and evil.” And yes, many medieval magic practitioners and enthusiasts were a) monks and the church and b) regular people, because it occupied a complex place in their belief system and was by no means simply evil. This doesn’t mean that they were “more” or “less” enlightened according to the also-wildly-erroneous Scale of Perceived Human Progress, but just that they were complicated, stereotypes are stupid, and my kingdom for one (1) single nuanced, thoughtful, or remotely accurate depiction of this in medieval-themed media. The end.

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

deeps-repus:

cheddar-baby:

*eating a ploughmans lunch* so, how long until it kicks in?

These pickled onions ain’t shit

Me 5 minutes later:

Never shoulda had the ploughman’s lunch now I’m beholden to my liegelord

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

trans4trans:

trans4trans:

google search Beautiful rocks near me

you are like a poet of some sort

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

comfycatboyfriend:

rostbef:

muppethole-deactivated20240312:

im cryingg thank y mr henson

Jim Henson drew the first sketch and was like “yeah that’s fine”

and he was right!!!

Sometimes the first draft is the correct draft.

Just be sure you’re legendary puppeteer Jim Henson before you submit it.

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

traegorn:

asexualboner:

one thing about tumblr at least here they’re just called “posts”. Saying “I saw this tweet/reel/tiktok/short” makes me feel like I’m ordering at a restaurant where they make you say Texas Tom’s Nut-Slappin Griddle-Chizzle instead of grilled cheese

Wait til you find out what they’re called on bluesky and mastodon

Rebluebs your mammaries

foldingfittedsheets:

So my friend Buck likes clowns. No he really likes clowns. No like. A lot.

He reluctantly and with great embarrassment told me this, and when teased about having a clown fetish he will retort quite pedantically that a fetish is required for sexual gratification and he only has a kink for clowns. No one else agrees with this hair splitting but it’s okay, it comforts him.

I assumed Buck’s proclivity toward clowns was somewhat private because he was so abashed when he admitted it to me. But when hanging out with him and his new partner she began to tease him that he’d blurt out to the whole VR chat that he loved a gal in clown makeup.

“I thought it was a secret,” I said.

He squirmed and admitted that he liked to get it out of the way in case it was discovered later.

His partner whispered to me when he was in the bathroom that she’d seen his clown folder and while they’d looked at it he’d exclaimed, “Ugh! That one’s a mime,” and moved the offending image to a separate folder. This had me in hysterics. A slippery mime had slipped in amongst his wholesome clown girls.

Later that day at DnD I announced to the group that we’d spent the day with Buck and his girlfriend. Two of them said in unison, “Buck has a girlfriend?!”

The third said at the same time, “Is she a clown?”

I absolutely lost it and asked how he knew about the clowns.

“I’ve met Buck three times. He told me about the clowns every time.”

This story is shared with Buck’s permission.

dduane:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

homunculus-argument:

My dash is full of struggling writers rn.

Charlie MacNamara and Wandering Star won’t be done until I do them and that is really not fair

This is one of those genuine pains in the ass.

“God but I want to read a [short story/novella/novelette/novel] where [INSERT REQUIRED SITUATION AND PLOT EVENTS HERE].”

(Local universe and also local God sit staring at speaker with expressions of resigned expectation)

“….Oh FFS, you mean I have to write it first? Whose good idea was this?!” (stomps off muttering)

milkcryptid:

do people have no shame anymore?

hneycmb:

Kinda wild how most people generally recognize that the “too sick to go to school, too sick to watch tv/play games” mindset our parents had was bullshit but still impose essentially the exact same rules on disabled adults and scrutinize them for enjoying low-energy hobbies while being too fatigued or in pain to work a full time job (or any job at all)

chilewithcarnage:

‘you still listen to music from 10 years ago 🤨?’ bitch if prehistoric humans had audio recording technology id be sat up here listening to grog and unga bunga’s greatest hits don’t play with me

beetledrink:

beetledrink:

not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like “i saw her at the devils sacrament!!!” girl… what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament 👀

happy birthday devils sacrament. i wish you were never born

littleguysdaily:

This was a Patreon Request

petranaradulovic:

petranaradulovic:

hey hey my plucky tumblr gang –

i’ve been laid off! actually, almost all of polygon has! bc vox sold us!

This really sucks and I wish i had something more to say right now but i am still in shock. wanted to let y'all know though since i know there’s plenty of polygon fans on here who might not be on twitter/bsky/wheveever the rest of the polygon staff is <3

Polygon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Mass Layoffs

ok now that i’ve officially been booted from my work laptop/company accounts and have a bit more of my head on my shoulders:

I was just shy of my 7th anniversary at Polygon, where I was hired as an intern. I wrote a BUNCH of amazing stuff! I got to work with a bunch of spectacular people. I am so so so damn proud of our site, which apparently was doing so well that I guess Vox decided to make a quick buck off of us! Damned if you do (make a profit), damned if you don’t!

In my time at Polygon, I really pushed to cover games/tv/movies/everything else through a particular lens, aka being an unabashed Tumblrina in this year of our lord 2025. Sometimes that meant being outwardly covering tumblr (like Goncharov); sometimes that was simply just gushing in a fangirlish way. I’m so grateful for all the editors who helped me along the way, all the wonderful writers I got to work with. And I am so, so disappointed in Vox Media’s upper management for effectively killing one of the best sites for entertainment and gaming coverage out there.

Before I worked at Polygon, it always felt like a special place to me, because it was a gaming site that was unabashedly pink and purple and embracing a different sort of audience than what we typically associate with “gamers.” For the past 7 years, I’ve covered rom-coms and visual novel mobile games and Jane Austen adaptations and pushed the boundaries of what our coverage could be – while also gushing about Dragon Age, Marvel movies, anime, and other typical Gamer TM content. I always wanted to hammer home the idea that the love that fuels stereotypical “geek stuff” is applicable to all sorts of things, especially those traditionally loved by a non cis straight male audience. And when approaching the stuff like video games/comics/etc, I always approached it from my fangirly tumblirna POV.

Idk what my point is here… I guess I wanted to share this on Tumblr, because I really do owe so much of my professional career to the days I spent on here cultivating my own interests and voice. And I hope that in some way, my writing felt y'all be seen

I’m taking some time to myself before looking for new opportunities. This actually coincides with me getting a chance to attend a prestigious creative writing workshop at the end of the month. So maybe it’s a sign that I should more aggressively pursue my creative projects! But this won’t be the last you see of me and my writing!

all my love <3

Petrana

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

biblicallyaccuratemoth:

nooodlesartstyle:

biblicallyaccuratemoth:

Check out my Patreon here!

And here I am on Webtoons and Tapas!

I adore my low voice. It’s pretty, it has a unique feel to it, and it’s mine. I worked really hard on it, and all that work paid off.

My secret little tip for voice training? Learn impressions! I worked out my voice by doing impressions of Lillith (The Owl House), Meg (Hercules)/Rose Quartz (Steven Universe), and Frieren (The Dub version, specifically.) I mixed those voices together with my own inflection to make something that’s really mine.

I’m not stuck with it. It’s stuck with me.

Low femme voices ARE hot. For about a decade I was hung up on a woman who sounded like she smoked a pack and drank a fifth of whiskey every day, mostly because of how gorgeous and husky her voice was.

thebreakfastgenie:

Sooooo few people are actually willing to defend the basic human rights of people who have committed crimes. Like I know it’s not fun but if you genuinely believe in human rights as a concept you can’t be okay with the state violating them in prisons I’m sorrrrry. Having moral principles is not always a fun time.

optimysticals:

the-fallen-blue:

multishipperpirateking:

yeahokayillreblogthat:

neurotypicalabusesurvivor:

This is a friendly reminder that none disabled people often do benefit from the same accommodations disabled people benefit from.

Yeah okay I’ll reblog that!!

My dad used to work for Vodafone and likes to tell a story about when he was working on a voicemail transcription service.

And there was a woman there who was some form of disability advocate (it was the 90s so her existence in the company was a minor miracle) and apparently she completely blew his mind on that project.

See, he’d imagined that this service was exclusively gonna be for deaf people. Obviously very useful for the very small number of people who couldn’t hear their phone, but why would you even own a mobile phone if you couldn’t hear?

But she described to him all the times he might want to read a message instead of listen to it. Maybe he was in a loud football crowd. Maybe there was important info that he needed to copy down that was spoken too fast. Maybe he was holding his sleeping newborn (me) and didn’t want his phone to be loud and wake them up.

This doesn’t feel as revolutionary as all that to those of us that have only ever known phones with the ability ‘send text message’, but given the timing and placement of this conversation I wonder if this woman and this project is *part of the reason text messaging exists*. The first text (SMS) message was sent by Vodafone UK in 1992 - where + when this conversation was happening - and then for a long time it was supported exclusively for 'messages from the carrier’, and this project was an early potential extra use of the SMS protocol.

So Yeh, building for disability is kinda handy..

can you imagine how often you would use sign language if everyone knew it

I legit use the little bits of ASL that I remember from grade-school often.

I’ve tried to learn it again (more amd conversational) as an adult and I struggle, but I’ll manage it eventually.

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

xxx-m34l-pr3pp3r-xxx:

im looking for a homo dentist to fuck

The wilder part is you can look for Homo Johnson the Fuck Dentist

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

poetrylesbian:

just remembered this old clickhole video i used to be obsessed with

This is how all poetry readings feel to me. I just cannot engage with poetry while the poet is standing there. I am here for the words, not the person who wrote them

animentality:

timetravelstudies:

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

grimeclown:

puppybong:

the meek when they inherit the earth

Bloodhounds don’t see with their eyes, hope this helps

persisting:

I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

kettlesound:

zohbugg:

sophisticatedswifts:

Apparently there’s a website called Public Square where conservatives register their businesses to identify themselves as “anti-woke” so other conservatives can find them. I just thought I would share in case anyone wanted to put their zip code in and learn which local businesses to avoid.

Website For MAGA-Friendly Businesses Backfires As People Use It For Boycotts

The utter gall of an “anti-woke” company selling a candle called “Bohemian Bliss” with a smudge stick in the background…why not just throw a trans flag in there as well? Go full irony!

Anyway, cool resource for boycotting!

doomhamster:

crescent-coral-base:

enriquemzn262:

Yes. Yes, it is.

Anyone else notice how the porn bots made a comeback for a while, while the ceasefire lasted, and then as soon as they started shooting again suddenly no more big-boobed babes?

madlori:

okthisway:

its-funnytwittertweets:

#the beauty of tumblr is that any new show i start i’m able to say oh that’s my friend. from gif.

it’s the blorbo. from everyone else’s shows.

alienseason:

On my local weather channel theres this small 20 somethings guy who does the minor weather and my family is so enchanted by him. He wears the most egregious suits and ties that make my grandparents go off the rails. Sometimes he blends in with the green screen and my grandparents go farther off the rails. My entire family calls him “sheldon” because any skinny white geeky guy is Sheldon Cooper to them. There is currently a huge tornado on the way and they sent Sheldon to go check it out. Sheldon sounds like he’s crying in the middle of this horrible rain and my grandparents are so upset about it. Sheldon could die out there. Why did they have to sacrifice him? Sacrificing their young. My grandmother has started a grudge against the main weather man for abusing poor poor Sheldon. I will update if Sheldon survives.

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

briebo-is-a-dragon:

briebo-is-a-dragon:

having a deviated septum and (likely as a symptom of it) anosmia when i am beaked the fuck up is so funny. my nostrils are huge. my nose is massive (and beautiful). ive practically got a snout. and you’re telling me it’s basically nonfunctional?? where can i get a refund

god knew id be too powerful with a working nose this large. he had to nerf me. id be able to find truffles with this thing

Me: blessed with a nose the length of my thumb

Also me: unable to breathe when lying down

exit-pursued-by-spiders:

blackbearmagic:

blackbearmagic:

blackbearmagic:

A page of incantations, or perhaps verbal stims, found on the museum floor

According to Reddit, this is apparently someone’s collection of “Italian brainrot memes”

Also according to Reddit, there is an entire wiki page about this

Tag yourself I’m rhinodino dildorino

I’m Orangutini Ananasini!