it feels like such a ridiculous thing to be upset about but as someone whose always been deeply self conscious about their height alongside dysphoria it really does bother me how like. idk. it feels like some people can't talk about short people's physical appearance without making some kind of joke. like short guys who can't be called attractive they have to be "short kings," or I was watching a video of two women boxing and they were both around my height (genuinely cool to see that!) and the op made a joke about how they looked like pixies fighting. and it's like ive both experienced a lot of misogynistic behavior around my height & being demeaned or picked up without my consent because "cute short girl," and then when i want to be recognized as butch or as a man there's antimasculist jokes about how I fail at being a big muscular guy (which also ties into me being disabled; I can't even be a "short buff guy," i have some muscle but I'm Small) and it just. hurts. feeling like no matter what being small means that i have to be a short king or a little gremlin or a smol bean!! like I can't be hot or intimidating or serious without it being A Whole Thing y'know. my height Has to be some kind of joke.

& like I'm 5'2 but I can imagine the hell of being shorter or having dwarfism. it just sucks

I’m 4′10.

I don’t get taken seriously. I’m always dressed either very nice or rather punk, not only because I enjoy it, but because it’s the only way I’m taken seriously.

I have trouble driving most cars, because pulling the seat up so I can reach the pedals scrunches up my arms. Or if I put a cushion on the seat so I can see over the steering wheel then I can’t reach the pedals. I can’t find any clothing that fits - I personally hem all of my pants. I cannot reach the second shelf in most kitchen cabinets. I cannot sit comfortably in most chairs. I have never found a couch I was comfortable sitting on without putting my feet up on something. I have trouble finding shoes that fit, because feet are, surprise surprise, proportionate to size. When I cook I do most of the work on a kitchen table and not the counter because trying to cut things and see into bowls on the higher counter is uncomfortable for me. I’m convinced that in 40 years I’m going to have physical problems that stem from trying to navigate a world built for people 12 inches taller than me.

I do have severe height dysphoria, but honestly? This is a social disability just like my autism. The very least people could do is stop making fun of me for it.

character who is sun-coded but not in the traditional ray-of-sunshine way. character who is sun-coded in the sense that they burn hot and bright and powerful, that they're a raging fury of fire and passion, and that maybe, just maybe, they are destroying themselves as they do so.

The Very Basics of Not Killing Your Computer

If you have a laptop DO NOT use it on a soft surface like a pillow or on a blanket, it’ll block the vents on your computer and make it get really fucking hot inside.

If you have a desktop you gotta open it up and blow out the dust sometimes.

If you are moving your laptop in a bag turn the laptop off. Don’t put it to sleep, don’t just shut the screen, turn it off, because otherwise it’s in the bag generating heat and there’s nowhere for the heat to go in the bag. OFF. Not sleep. OFF.

Okay I know that should be obvious but drop damage to your hard drive is bad bad news. Be as careful as you can to set your computer gently on flat surfaces; don’t leave it hanging out on a bed where it can get knocked off, don’t set it on the roof of your car. And yes, just dropping it a couple inches can kill your hard drive or totally shatter your screen.

Look I’ve seen four people ruin their laptops because they had a pen on the keyboard and closed the laptop and it fucked up the screen and the keyboard and it sucks so much and you feel awful after it happens because it’s so avoidable just don’t put things on your keyboard and always check that your laptop is clear before you close it.

You’ve only got one power jack and a limited number of other inputs on your computer and if they detach from the motherboard you’re fucked. USB ports get damaged because people use them a lot and eventually it weakens the connection and then they just stop working and it sucks. You can get around this with USB ports by using a USB hub to connect things like your keyboard and mouse.

For your power plug you just gotta be careful. Avoid tripping over the cord at all costs, don’t yank the plug out of the computer. It will SUCK VERY MUCH A LOT if you have to buy a new computer because the power port lost contact with the motherboard.

Don’t move your computer with things plugged into it. Take the power cord off before you put your laptop in the bag, take out the USB mouse dongle, do not travel with little nubby bits sticking out of your computer that can easily get caught or get tweaked or snap off inside of the thing.

(I really can’t emphasize enough that most of the “it will cost more than it’s worth to fix this” laptops I see are because of USB ports and power jacks. People don’t seem to know that this isn’t something that can be fixed easily; a broken power jack is a “remove the motherboard and resoldier components” job, not a “plug a new one in in fifteen minutes” job and most computer repair shops aren’t going to solder things for you and if they DO it’s going to be very expensive)

You should probably restart more than once a month but whatever. This is actually something that I consider part of reducing heat stress because when your processor is straining to keep up with all the background bullshit that’s running from a program you opened three weeks ago it’s going to use up resources and get hot and look just restart it once in a while.

Also the updates are almost always okay and safe and generally running updates is a good and secure thing to do (though maybe follow a blog dedicated to the OS you run because if there IS a problem with the updates that blog will probably talk about it before the update gets forced on your computer)

Yes you should probably be running an antivirus.

Sophos is free and it’s fine. But don’t pay for it - if you’re using Sophos use the free version.

If you’re looking for something paid and a little more comprehensive I recommend ESET - get the cheap version, renewals cost less than the initial purchase, and feel free to get a multi-year version, the credentials follow your email not the computer so if your computer dies before your license expires you can install the license on a new computer.

DO NOT INSTALL NORTON OR MCAFEE THEY ARE EXPENSIVE BULLSHIT. Kaspersky is whatever. It’s less bullshit than Norton or McAfee but not as good as ESET for about the same cost.

If you think you’ve got a virus run the free version of Malwarebytes and get your shit cleaned.

Again this should be obvious and yet. But seriously, just make a rule for yourself that drinks aren’t allowed on the same table as your computer and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.

Okay I fucking hate amazon but here’s a thing you should be using, just search the rest of the internet for “surge protector/UPS” and you’ll find something that isn’t from amazon - APC is a solid brand for this.

Basically you want a fat surge protector that has a little bit of a battery backup and you want to plug your computer (desktop OR laptop) into that instead of into the wall. The benefit of this is twofold:

1) if there’s a power surge the UPS will prevent your computer’s power supply from getting fried and possibly frying parts of your motherboard

2) if there’s a power outage and you’re *at* your computer you’ll have enough time to save what you’re working on before your computer loses power (like, you’ll maybe only have a minute or two on a small UPS but that’s still time to hit CTRL+S and keep from losing work)

At a bare, bare minimum your computer should be plugged into a surge protector but NOT directly into the wall.

[we interrupt this yelling for me to tell you that Western Digital has apparently released their new My Passport line and I’m obligated to inform you that you can get a 2.5″ USB 3.0 backup drive with FIVE FUCKING TERABYTES OF STORAGE for $130. Or you can get 4TB for $93. Or you can get 1TB for $53. basically what I’m saying is that it is not only cheap computer season it is also cheap hard drive season.]

[also if you’re getting a backup drive get western digital not seagate seagate fucking sucks and has a much higher failure rate]

Uh, okay, anyway - Do an image backup of your computer every once in a while so that if you get infected or your hard drive dies or whatever you can just restore from backup and move on like nothing happened.

HERE’S HOW TO DO AN IMAGE BACKUP.

You know what is cheap? USB Keyboards and USB mice. You know what is not cheap? Fixing the touchpad on a laptop or replacing a laptop keyboard.

Get yourself a USB hub, a USB Keyboard and a USB Mouse (wired or wireless, doesn’t matter) and if you’re using your laptop at home plug *that* into your computer.

Also if your keyboard on your laptop breaks it’s fine just to use a USB keyboard instead I promise; if the screen breaks it’s also usually cheaper and easier to get a used or inexpensive monitor than it is to replace the screen. Your laptop is basically just a very small version of whatever bullshit is going on inside a desktop, if the peripherals break but the core components are fine you can just use it like a desktop.

Unless it’s a piece of shit that doesn’t have any USB ports or video out in which case you got ripped off, friend, demand functionality in your devices I’m sorry.

/rant

anyways (I say this as someone who is deeply critical of the united states government, military, unchecked capitalism, police, etc) I am SICK of people treating america as if it has no cultural value or positives so….. I love u 85 million acres (bigger than italy) of national parks. I love u harlem renaissance. I love u groundhogs day. I love u sweet tea and fried chicken and jambalaya. I love u apple cider donuts and maizes on crisp autumn days. I love u 95k miles of coastlines and new england fisherman and hand knitted sweaters. I love u halloween where millions of people dress up and give candy to strangers and carve jack o’lanterns. I love u small talk and small towns and potlucks and bringing over casseroles to your struggling neighbors. I love u cowboys and ranch hands and arizonian cactus. I love u appalachian trail and dirtbikes and divebars. I love u sparklers and fireflies. I love u mark twain and toni morrison and emily dickinson and henry david thoreau. I love u rock n roll i love u bluegrass and hippies i love u jimi hendrix and nirvana and CCR and janis joplin. I love u victorian houses and jonny appleseed and john henry and mothman and bigfoot. I love u foggy days in the pacific northwest and neon signs and roadside attractions. I love u baseball and 1950s diners and soft serve. I love u native american art and pop art and poptarts. I love u blue jeans and barbecues and jazz musicians 

the snarky gay one is in love with the stoic one.

Let’s put this to rest. Once and for all

Reblog for sample size! It must be settled!

My parents have a small citrus tree in a pot that spends most of the year inside, and goes out on their back porch in the summer, and this year a pair of robins built a nest in it and they have 4 babies!

1 day old:

2 days old:

10 days old:

They grow up so fast! I expect they'll have already left before the next time I visit. (Photos by my mother)

I have been told that they've left!

This is the tree - it's quite small. Papa stuck a grapefruit seed in a pot 20something years ago and somehow it's still alive.

Hey Google wants to steal all my shit, what's up with that?

New News!

Google Says It'll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI

This change would not only mean they could make profit off of *all* your work posted online or in Google Docs, but it would also be an extreme breach of privacy.

What can we do?

The law is slower than AI advancement and corporate greed, as such we need to draw attention to this issue. Contact your local government about the issue, or/and sign this petition!

It's currently in German, but the translation is :

Yesterday it was announced that Google can now take all photos (including of children) of private and non-private individuals and documents that have been placed either privately or publicly online or in a Google app (Playstore), save them and feed them into one of your statistics programs. (AI). This is not only an ethical violation of copyright holders (in the case of journalistic articles, e-books, art and photos), but also an invasion of privacy for simple personal gain.

Would you like private documents to be taken from your Google Doc, Drive or other apps? Or photos of your relatives, children etc? Would you like to see sensitive data in such profit-making software?

If not then please sign. We want to stop this behavior in its infancy. So that other companies cannot follow Googles example and take advantage of the currently unclear legal status to make unethical profit from your information.

Our goal is to get the European Commission's attention, and we can only do that with your help!

Thank you. <:

Fandom Things

So you want a stable, not going anywhere place to just kind of collect your thoughts and ficlets and links that are important without fighting tumblr's search?

Check out Dreamwidth, where you control who sees your posts via subscriptions and privacy level access tools. I've even got a rec-your-places post going on to help find ways to connect or get started.

Star Trek fan? Com see us on Ad Astra Archive, a fork of the AO3 code being very personally watched over by mod @sl-walker.

General fan creator, looking for something to have as a back up or new home? Come see SquidgeWorld Archive, ran by a fan that's been around a long damn time.

Reblogs appreciated, and if you know of other sites out there, to give as potential back ups, primary usages, or just because, FEEL FREE to add them on!

actual fandom elitism: often perpetuated by cishet white men who assume that women, people of colour and lgbt people cannot enjoy or know things about their interests. or that they’re only into it for romance / finding characters hot. very much a problem in comic and gaming spaces.

NOT FANDOM ELITISM: tired people on the internet asking you to actually read and understand the source material instead of making everything about shipping and tropes.

You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

This is super common and I wish we were taught when we begin to write that those quoted lines are also in a sea of the same sort of setup we obsess over not being 'good enough'. I saw multiple people drop out of writing courses over this in college. Sure, sometimes you need a better way to describe something prevalent or to pinpoint an emotion, but if EVERYTHING was written in that sort of tone for a whole book it would prove utterly exhausting to read.

Also, if every single line in the book was hard-hitting and mindblowing, then it wouldn't be memorable because it would be drowned out.

The best lines are famous because they stand out.

It’s also important to remember that sometimes the “ordinary” lines are made extraordinary and emotional by their context. There’s a line in Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel Memory that is absolutely heartbreaking and made me break down sobbing the first time I read it.

“Ivan, you idiot! What are you doing here?”

The line is dialogue said by a character with dementia to his nephew who’s looking after him.

It’s not the line itself, it’s the impact.

To build on @captainlordauditor’s point (and fandom), some lines hit because of their power, others because of their placement.

Lois McMaster Bujold is wonderful at (as I think another tumblr user put it) building the spear point, where the impact of a line is magnified by all of the work that goes into it.

For example, there is a line-literally the last line of one of her books-that out of context, reads like any other question.

But IN context? When you consider that fifteen (15) books go into building the spear for THIS line? Oh, in context….it fucking shatters you, and her main character with you, in only three simple words:

“Count Vorkosigan, sir?”

“Count Vorkosigan, sir?” broke me when I read it, and it’s made all the more powerful by the fact that it’s the end of a novel and it echoes a line/scene from the beginning of one of the very early books, establishing the in universe context that makes “Count Vorkosigan” such an emotional sentence:

It really is a spears point sharpened with the thrust of 15 novels behind it.

so i have a mildly popular “reblog and put in in the tags” post going around and its. very clear how many people don’t know how to interact with a tumblr post

so, first of all, tumblr’s culture has changed a lot in the past couple years. there’s a genuine community effort to not start any drama, and ironically a lot of the current hostility is an effort to keep things calm. there’s also a change in how people interact with posts, so if you haven’t been here in a while please skip down to the tags/replies/reblog with text section.

for newcomers: you should be reblogging posts about as liberally as you would like something on twitter. if you only like stuff, people will think you are rude/a bot. you’ve probably heard people talk about “cultivating your dash,” and thats because this platform is 100% centered around your dashboard. trending matters less, unfollowing and blocking in order to shape your dash into it’s best form is widely accepted, the majority of the content you’ll find and interact with will be because of your dash, and the only way to put things on your dash is to reblog them. tumblr users are deeply distrustful of algorithms and have largely turned off the “see posts your friends have liked” function (i recommend you also turn of the various algorithms in settings → general settings → dashboard preferences).

so, once you’ve reblogged a post, there’s three ways to add content to it. the tags, replies, and reblogging with text. all of them have different connotations

the tags: an inside voice. originally they were meant for organizing your blog (and they’re still used for this), but they’ve also morphed into a way to share thoughts that aren’t funny/insightful enough for non-followers to be interested in. when in doubt, put your comment in the tags

replies: basically talking to your friends in class. your followers have no way of finding your replies (they don’t pop up on the dash, nobody gets notified except for the original poster) so chances are, only the person who made the post is gonna see your comment. it’s for quick one-offs that you’re okay with other people overhearing, but really is only made for one person. they’re like a public dm

reblog with text: an outside voice. you’re getting up on a stage in town square and entertaining people. make sure it’s funny or insightful— bottom line, add something new to the conversation. you should use this the least

general rules of thumb: 

Finally real advice for new users. This is a solid guide for how to make the transition from Twitter to Tumblr.

In particular, artists need you to reblog. A reblog helps them get seen. A like doesn’t help them at all.

Having been talking about desire demons and the one in Arl of Redcliffe in particular, I'm curious. (Note: if you picked arcane secrets just to unlock the blood magic spec and then reloaded to pick a different option/picked a different option on subsequent runs, please choose the option you picked on the second go; this poll is for character choices, not mechanical ones.)

Okay.

I am being super, ultra cautious about how I'm wording this, but am going out on a limb here.

As someone who literally helped to care for her much younger brother (I had solo custody of him one night per week during his teens, I fed him, supervised homework, did his laundry, got him ready for school, made his lunches, all that jazz) I am just slightly familiar with what it's like to step in to be a guardian for a younger relative.

I'm reading Reborn. I'm reading basically all of Dick and Damian's appearances. I'm...not seeing a parent-child relationship here. I see mentoring and supervision, yes. I appreciated the "I was trying to have a night off" moment in Streets of Gotham. But a lot of this is just big brothering or vigilante mentor stuff.

I fully, 100% believe Dick and Damian bonded during their period together. I also believe they had a little family unit going on between Alfred, Dick and Damian. I respect people reading whatever interpretation they want to read of this material.

But from what I see on the paper? I think calling it parental is a stretch. Damian's in kincare, folks. On paper? Damian's physical needs are being provided by Alfred, his vigilante mentoring is being provided by Dick, as far as I can tell he's not even in education, and we get precious few insights into what's happening during daylight hours. (Especially, ESPECIALLY as I really have not seen Damian receive, well, boundaries outside of the field. Or consequences for his actions. Or...really, any active parenting)

Dick's looking after Damian, sure. But he's not Damian's parent.

And that's perfectly ok, not everything has to be reduced to a simple traditional nuclear family ideal.

i've seen this with urls but not with icons, so...

Saw a similar post asking about the top 9 most populous cities worldwide and 98% of respondents do not live in one of those. Was very curious to repeat the experiment using the top US metro areas

are yall ok

You're all so clinically stupid, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

prev tags:

I have had short hair for 15 years of my life and I have never not tilted my head back??? Longest it’s been in that time is like 7 inches scalp to tip

what, from the bottom of my heart, the fuck

I can kind of understand why this happens.

When I was a kid, I used to absolutely hate the feeling of water hitting my face in the shower, to the point I'd have screaming meltdowns when my mom would tip my head back when washing my hair. So for years, I'd shower with either my head level or tilted forward to keep the spray of water off my face. It wasn't until I got older and growing my hair out that I started tipping it back.

It helped that by that time I was much older and better able to process the sensation of water on my face as well as control the water stream itself. It also didn't help that something about the way parents wash kids faces and shampoo their hair feels kind of rough when you're that small that it makes it all feel very disorintating so keeping your head level probably seemed to ease that somewhat.

I don't think every kid had my issue with water but I wouldn't be surprised if the keeping your head level thing is just something you learn as a kid that became so ingrained that many never think to outgrow it

See, that’s the part I don’t get: I ALSO hated water on my face as a kid, so I always had my head craned back as far as possible (and initially also with a towel covering my face to keep it dry, though I grew out of that) so it would only hit my hair.

I really do think it’s a hair length thing. When I have short hair, doesn’t matter how far I tip my head back, because my hair is too short to all point forwards, water WILL get in my eyes. When I have long hair tipping my head back works better than forwards.