Lyn Naliaz McIthilien

a genre that effortlessly blends pop, rap, and electronic sounds against incredible synchronized choreography, K-pop has made its mark across tumblr (or should we say the world?) and fans can’t get enough. take a look at some of the K-pop artists tumblr users love listening to, creating fanart for, and just simply vibing out to 🫰

these tracks have really got our toes tappin’ over here:

I woke up this morning thinking about the color spectrum and music notes. I wanted an audio visualizer that shows notes as colors. It's wildly impractical and I'm not sure how it would work.

Then I thought about an RGB guitar 🎸 tuner 🎵

As a kid, I saw sing-a-longs on TV where the ball would roll along the top of the song hitting each word as it was sung. A visual indicator of what was being sung.

I have an LED RGB light on when I play.

I've often wished the color could match the pitch. Blue for high notes, green in the middle, and red for low notes or bass.

blue 💙 soprano, green 💚 alto, yellow 💛 tenor, red ♥️ baritone / bass

So I went looking for a guitar tuner or music visualizer that matches notes to colors

I didn't have any luck, but I did have some ideas

Mayhem immediately wanted in on this..

But it took her a couple tries to succeed. Turns out it's a one cat at a time kinda box

First of all, they're not real. That part is really important.

Second, one of the advantages of fiction is that it allows you to see the entire shape of a character and their backstory. You can understand how they became who they are, what wounds they're carrying, what fears are motivating them, and what choices led them to where they are.

And now, look at me in my fictional Tumblr eyes for a second while I say this, as I gently grab you by the shoulders:

Sympathy is not the same thing as endorsement.

You can recognize that a character is hurting the people around them while also recognizing that they're hurting themselves.

In fact, I'd argue that's one of the most important things stories can teach us.

Cycles of cruelty, abuse, isolation, and self-destruction don't become easier to recognize by pretending the people caught inside them are cartoon villains with no inner lives.

They become easier to recognize and end when we understand how those cycles form in the first place.

A character can't only be tragic if they're innocent.

They can be tragic because you can see exactly how they got here and exactly how they could have been something else.

You can feel bad for them.

You can understand them.

You can even love them as a character.

And still think the way they treat the people around them is abhorrent.

Those aren't contradictory positions.

That's just engaging with a character as a character. Not as a morality test. But as an idea being explored through fiction.

Sometimes a story isn’t asking you to agree with someone.

It’s asking you to understand them.

And understanding people, fictional or otherwise, is harder than deciding whether they’re good or bad. But it’s also more important, because it’s what actually opens the door to change and self-betterment.

Stories, at their best, aren’t really about verdicts.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.