Redbud propaganda: they have heart shaped leaves 💚

Also the flowers are edible and taste (in my opinion) like mild green beans.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

The new month is starting!!!! Are you going to use your public library?

To count, you have to have used the library ONCE in each calendar month.

Borrowing books and physical media count.

Borrowing digital media in all forms counts.

Going to the library to write counts.

Dropping a fiver as a donation to the libray counts.

Sitting in the library to work or hang out counts.

Attending a program/class offered or hosted by the library counts.

Calling the reference desk with a question counts, but ya gotta be kind to the librarians, 'cause librarians rock.

Taking your kid (for whatever value of "your" kid... If you take care of a kid, ya know?) to a program counts.

Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.

I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

To continue our commitment to user safety and to comply with local laws, we will start using age groups to determine access to certain experiences.

People in Brazil or in the UK, who are 18 or older, will soon need to verify their age to change content label settings and view mature-labeled content. Until then, the settings will be locked to hide.

As a reminder, verification is handled by our age-assurance partner, k-ID. Tumblr won't have access to the information you submit, just the final age-verification result. Documents are deleted after confirmation, and facial scan data never leaves your device. 

k-ID is highly unreliable, and is putting more people at risk of data breaches than the alternative of minors encountering 'mature content' that you heavily police (over-liberally imo, but is policed and removed per Tumblr's terms of service). It is clearly obvious that a service involved in a data breach controversy with another popular social platform (Discord, October 2025)

(From here on out I am mainly focusing on UK laws and guidelines, as that is what I am more familiar with.)

The UK's Online Safety Act 'applies to services even if the companies providing them are outside the UK should they have links to the UK. This includes.... (if) it is capable of being accessed by UK users and there is a material risk of significant harm to such users.' (see below).

Per Tumblr's User Guidelines, "Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts (or content with an overt focus on genitalia) are not allowed on Tumblr." ( https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/user-guidelines ) According to its own guidelines, there ought not to be 'a material risk of significant harm to (UK) users' for Tumblr to deem their site applicable to the act.

(It should also be worth noting that a petition against the act on the grounds of freedom of information and speech by over half a million people; more fuel to the argument against the age verification.)

This week has been a terrible week of grief and rage particularly for black Americans. Such a violent reminder of how many people still want them to have no voice. For someone who grew up in an environment where anti-black racism was mostly systemic and passive --a passive absorption of "black on black crime" or "welfare queens", a constant drip of negative stereotypes and propaganda, but with little active animosity--it's always shocking to be reminded that a lot of people still truly hate black people. I see it, but I certainly don't understand it. I've had to do plenty of unlearning, like everybody in our culture, but the real, actual hatred--that is just incredible to see. Horrible.

I don't have a neat conclusion. I wish it could just all stop. I'll keep fighting, and I hope we can turn a corner in our national history soon.

Just assume all other parameters are neutral. It's a friendly enough dog, you're not in a rush, etc.

here's the book-seller article. you have to sign up for a free account to read it, so I'll just give an overview.

The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo: an evil alien brain-slug gets isekaid to a fantasy world where he encounters a spider-centaur. they have graphic sex (and yes, the spider uses his pedipalps). this one will be out in March 2027

Anna Stewart is Not Human: a changeling story that is definitely not a clumsy metaphor for autism. I get to illustrate this one!!! it'll be out October 2027

and apparently i have read or visited something like 11,600 individual fics since i got on ao3!!! which both feels very big and very small.

i got this number by going to history, scrolling to the bottom, seeing how many pages of history i have, and multiplying that number by twenty (cuz ao3 lists 20 results per page). 580 pages of results = ~11,600 individual fics. (ao3 sorts rereads of the same fic as one result, and also counts deleted fics in results!!!)

which made me so curious: