Bite the bytes of surreality

It’s a *Toy* Story 🤠

You knew it! My new original song “I Knew It, I Knew You” for Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 will be yours on June 5th. I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story movie. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?

That's us, together.

While we're looking up at the Artemis II astronauts journeying to the Moon, they're looking back home at us. 

In this image, Earth peeks through the capsule window, reminding us that a view like this relies on the ingenuity and hard work of countless people back home.

In the second image, we see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere.

//

Behold the Spanish version of the modern classic ‘Mysterious Cat’s Poem’:

My favorite part about writing is that first spark of an idea. It can happen at any time, for any reason. The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl. I was a guest on one of my favorite shows, The Graham Norton Show. For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a UK late night show where Graham Norton (the insanely charismatic and lovable host) invites a random group of actors, entertainers, musicians, etc to be on his show and we all sit there and chat like it’s a dinner party. They even serve wine. Anyway. I remember thinking I got ridiculously lucky with the group I was paired with. Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lewis Capaldi. All people whose work I’ve admired from afar. When we were all talking during the broadcast, Domhnall made a light hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos. He’s Irish! He was joking! Except that in that moment during the interview, I was instantly struck with an *idea*. And so a week later he received an email script I’d written for the Opalite video, where he was playing the starring role. I had this thought that it would be wild if all of our fellow guests on the Graham Norton show that night, including Graham himself, could be a part of it too. Like a school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory. To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90’s with us and help with this video. You might even recognize some friendly faces from The Eras Tour. I got to work with one of my favorite people in the world, Rodrigo Prieto, again! I had more fun than I ever imagined - Made new friends, metaphors, and fashion choices. It was an absolute thrill to create this story and these characters. Shot on film. The Opalite video is out now on Spotify & Apple Music. 

Earlier this evening, the IOF boarded The Madleen humanitarian aid ship, headed to break the siege on Gaza.

As a result, 12 foreign nationals have been kidnapped by the IOF and their fate is currently unknown.

You can help.

You can contact the relevant ministries of foreign affairs for the crew on board The Madleen and also the UK foreign ministry as this was a UK flagged ship.

This is a violation of international law and an attack on the UK's sovereignty.

The crew on board The Madleen also reported white "paint" being poured on them and it's unknown what this substance was.

Please write to your local representatives and the relevant ministries of foreign affairs to demand the safe release of all 12 crew members who were on board The Madleen.

You belong with me. 💚💛💜❤️🩵🖤

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

It’s not even about Trump at this point. He’s gonna get in office and do whatever he does and it’s gonna be a mess but whatever. This is indicative of deeper problem. This is just the ugly consequence of the already present reality in this country that we all just despise each other. There is no solidarity and there is no love. Trump being in office or not doesn’t change the fact that America is a breeding ground for violent hatred. Trump has given people a shining example of how to give in to the worst parts of your human nature and make it the problem of everyone around them. I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do about that. I don’t know if that’s something we can come back from. And if anything COULD be done about it, Trump certainly wouldn’t do it. Honestly, Kamala probably wouldn’t have either. We are so deeply fucked.

However, I must say, if you voted for Trump, I hope that peace never finds you. Instead, I hope clarity strikes you someday like a clap of lightning and you have to live the rest of your life with the knowledge and guilt of what you’ve done and who you are as a person.

The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted. This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.

And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is out now.