You show up for your first day at Copyright-Free Magic School. As you're going through orientation, you're informed that all new students get a school-assigned familiar that they are responsible for housing and maintaining. The staff member assures you that your assigned familiar is appropriately chosen and reflects you in some way.

Spin this to find out yours. (Remember, you are responsible for maintaining this familiar in your dorm room.)

hey guys so apparently this is a thing a lot of people don't realise but like. if you have had writer's block/ art block for like. six months. a year. two years. that's maybe not a block. that's maybe depression. and you should maybe look into treating the source of the problem instead of just beating yourself up for not being able to write/draw. be kind to yourself and know that your struggle to create isn't based in laziness or a lack of skill or talent.

You also do have like, a finite amount of energy. Especially creative and emotional energy.

The celebrate-the-grind stories where some famous artist held down two grueling part-time jobs to make ends meet and got by on four hours of sleep a night so they'd have time to write their novel or paint or whatever, so what's your excuse are absolute bullshit. We should look at those about the same as we look at long-haul truckers doing a lot of amphetamines to handle driving for 16 hours a day or AAA game studios and crunch time.

So yeah, if your ability to make art has dried up, you really should take a good look at the underlying reasons and see if there's maybe some self-care you need to be doing. The answer is pretty much never "laziness."

tags via @tyrannosaurus-trainwreck

~ Home Cookery in War-Time, by Ernest Oldmeadow, 1915

Actually very good advice

Is this still good advice? Do we still make enameled saucepans with things that will become poisonous if the enamel is scraped open?

On the direct level, it’s good advice with non-stick pans: if the non-stick coating gets scratched, it can start flaking Teflon into your food, and that isn’t good.

But in a broader sense, the idea that “if it’s too unsafe/unpleasant/broken for you, it’s too unsafe/unpleasant/broken to donate” is still very, very relevant. Food pantries everywhere have stories about people donating expired cans of food; it was expired, so the donor didn’t want them, without considering it’s just as expired and unwanted by the people who need to rely on the food pantry. Clothing drives often stress that they want clean, non-stained clothes for the same reasons: people will donate their garbage. It’s an indignity to think that something not good enough for you will be good enough for The Poors. That is just as true now as it was in 1915.

If you got enough money to live happily and comfortably for the rest of your life, but everyone who saw you immediately knew what fandom you are in and understood what that means, would you take it?

New: Search operators for better searching!

We hear you, and we share your frustrations: it’s hard to find a specific post. You know it has a particular tag or phrase, and it was posted on this date, or at least, within a specific year. But you can't find it!

So, today, we’re excited to announce that you can use ✨ advanced search operators ✨ in the search bar now! You can now say potato from:staff year:2021 to easily enjoy that video of a potato being microwaved again.

Before we jump into the details, a couple of caveats to note:

OK! Let’s go explore these operators!

Exact phrase match

When you surround your query with regular double quotes (not curly quotes), it will match posts with that exact phrase in the post's text content, or that exact phrase as a tag.

For example, "chappell roan is roan of arc" matches posts with that exact phrase in the content, and also matches posts that have the exact tag #chappell roan is roan of arc.

Match operator

By default, the query matches the post on either the text or the tags.

You can use match:text to specify you want to search the post content, or match:tags to search the post tags. For example:

From operator

Use from:blog or from:@​blog to find only posts by a particular blog.

For example, halloween from:staff finds all posts by @staff that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

Year operator

Use year:YYYY to find posts from a particular year.

For example, halloween year:2019 finds all posts from 2019 that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

Date operator

Use date:YYYY-MM-DD to find posts from a particular date.

For example, halloween date:2019-10-08 finds all posts created on October 8, 2019 that has the word "halloween" in the post content or tags.

All together

You can combine all the tools above to form even more specific queries:

Congrats! You’re now a Tumblr search wizard! 🪄

Other syntax

As a reminder, you can already search by a tag, or by multiple tags:

You can combine this with the new operators to find what you are looking for!

A guide on how to use the new operators has also been added to our Search and Filtering Basics Guide.

Tumblr Patio support

The enhanced syntax makes Tumblr Patio even more powerful. You can now open multiple search columns each with different fine-tuned queries that use the syntax above to get you customized feeds.

Feedback

We’d love to hear what you think! Please share your feedback in the replies and reblogs of this post, or by reaching out to Tumblr Support.

When I was a very suicidal trans activist in Texas, Benjamin Sisko saying “sure, you would [die for your people]. Dying gets you off the hook. The question is: are you willing to live for your people?” changed and possibly saved my life. It’s up there with “if we are going to be damned, let us be damned for who we really are” from Picard. Star Trek not only shows us a better world, it teaches us how to make it there

lindt is being sued in a class action in the united states because they are one of MANY brands of chocolate that tested high for heavy metals. and this is despite lindt claiming their chocolate is "expertly crafted with the finest ingredients". no recall was issued after the tests came out. lead and cadmium can fuck the body over BAD.

lindt's genius defense is that they are going to stop saying the whole thing about being expertly crafted with the finest ingredients, so nobody can complain about the heavy metals in their chocolate anymore! and that makes it okay. source: trust me bro

(now please drop the lawsuit thanks)

consumer reports test results of a bunch of different chocolate brands <- original report being referenced

even more chocolate brands that were tested for heavy metals

imagine this. you advertise yourself as "the coolest dude around". your whole persona is being "cool" and "chill". and then one day, you burn someone's house down on purpose. they inevitably sue the shit out of you. and your defense is that you will stop calling yourself "cool" or "chill" so nobody can reasonably expect that you will not set things on fire, because fire is hot, which is the opposite of cool and chill. and therefore everything is fine now and nobody can be mad at you anymore.

that is lindt's defense here.

this can’t be real

He put them together at the kids table that doesn’t exist I’m fucking crying

its easy to make fun of this (and i think we should) but its also important to note the description of this new department that trump has given

[transcript: "together, these two wonderful americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies - essential to the 'save america' movement," trump wrote. "i look forward to elon and vivek making changes to the federal bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all americans."]

to be clear: trump is planning to create a new department whose purpose is literally to deregulate and defund government oversight. this will lead to corporations having greater freedom to fuck over consumers while making more money, and he is putting two billionaires in charge of it.

sure, maybe this is just a ploy to keep them quiet. giving them the illusion of power in exchange for backing him. but lets not forget all the regulations trump cut during his last term

which has directly led to the constant recalls of consumer goods and foodstuffs over the past several years. the recent e coli outbreak at mcdonalds? the boars head listeria recall? these are the products of deregulation. getting rid of laws and standards that protect consumers by making sure money hungry corporations dont cut corners.

the funny name is a smokescreen. keep your eye on these fuckers.

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

This is the definition of frisson for me

Best reply ^^^ with the full, infuriating story.

Link here: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/a-matter-of-principles/

Please note. The orange one is not included because A. He isn’t a billionaire. And B. Calling him obnoxious is too kind for him.

If you're having a bad day, just remember that it's going to be winter soon and imagine what will happen to all the Cybertrucks ❤️

Salt-rusted unprotected steel panels... Meltwater getting into poorly constructed and poorly isolated electronics... Stuck in snowdrifts that a real truck would have been able to deal with... Oh, those are indeed happy images. Yes indeed...

It's winter in the US is anything happening to all the cybertrucks

No snow here yet. Lots of Cybertrucks in my area, so I’ll keep an eye out.

Keep us updated I am so curious to see how they handle Normal Weather

There should be Cybertruck Winter, like Fat Bear Week. Where we see which cybertrucks fall first and which ones make it to the end in usable condition.

Dispatch from the far northern hemisphere and have witnessed a Cybertruck in the winter wilds.

We're early enough into the snow season in that the damage isn't obvious. My guess is that exposure to road salts are really going to destroy these ambulatory dumpsters, but we won't start to see that until spring. Road salt is difficult to impossible to get off in a regular car wash, and we know that Cybertruck can't handle even that.

On the one I saw, any metallic shine that the Cybertruck had was completely lost in a combination of cold winter temps, light street grunge, and lower ambient sunlight. It was the same color as my friend's early 2000s silver pickup truck. One of the big draws, imo, is that stainless steel panelling and to see it turn into the same shade of grey as one of the most popular truck colors twenty years ago would be disappointing to me. It's not special anymore.

Local Cybertruck enthusiasts who are salty dogs at winter driving have started vinyl wrapping their automotive basket cases. The trend seems to be to go from the door windows down, which gives them a beach cooler vibe that is similarly underwhelming.

They’re already having issues! The head lights are sunken in for some reason. This means there is a shelf to hold snow in front of the lights and block them.

Now, every car has to have the snow cleared off the headlights before you drive, but this is way worse. That shelf collects snow as you drive. People have to pull over and clear the snow off mid-drive because they lose their headlights.

WHY ARE THEY BUILT THAT WAY

Ok ok look just make sure you're not drinking or eating anything while playing this one, you WILL choke

Anyways when I was sixteen I wrote a story about a spaceship's communications officer (think Uhura) who was given a brain implant when he was a baby that automatically translates every language in the universe, but which interferes with his ability to perceive and process subtle changes in tone. He hears an emotionless automated translator voice inside his head rather than hearing the real voices being physically carried by air vibrations. So he has the ability to interpret every word in every language, but he can never interpret tone of voice. And the ultimate message of the story is that understanding every possible text isn't enough -- if you don't understand subtext, you'll be isolated. The "communications officer" actually struggles to communicate more than anyone else on the ship.

You'll never guess what they diagnosed me with a year later.

I’m not sure how many people realize that there’s a way in which hurt/comfort is actually very kinky, because at its core you’ve got this emotional power exchange fantasy where one character is vulnerable and helpless and the other takes care of them. In the case of stories involving grievous injuries, where someone is bedridden for a long time, you often end up with two characters in a 24/7 total power exchange relationship without a safeword. It just doesn’t involve as many whips and dog collars.

Can I?? Like burrow into your brain like an amoeba? I need to feed on more of this

[Image description: Tags reading: #I think people get too caught up in the idea of kink as eroticizing the taboo (not that that's a bad thing at all lol) #and forget that coming at it from another angle kink is about vulnerability and trust #the fantasy of being at your most vulnerable and someone not hurting you (or hurting you and it still being okay) #vs the fantasy of someone letting you see them at their most vulnerable and trusting you not to hurt them (or hurting them and it's okay) #i think if people understood that more they'd understand that like having some interest in some kind of power exchange is like #super duper common #also as an ace person i don't really find like. the physical reality of sex very appealing #like it's whatever it exists it's fine it sounds messy #but like... the vulnerability... oogh #also I think this is the underlying motivation behind omegaverse too but nobody wants to admit that #it's literally 'what if i literally could not control the most desperate and vulnerable parts of myself and you stayed anyway 🥺' #that's kink baybee! #anyways. tag essay brought to you by my hyperfixation on the psychological aspects of kink /.End ID]

i always see people complaining about pokemon like pikachu charizard and the eevees being overmarketed but i never see anyone say anything like that about gengar despite him being marketed just as hard. this is because gengar is our friend and everyone loves him