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so. FUN FACT

tumblr is apparently rolling out a beta for a new post editor that essentially makes it so there are no longer post “types” (text post, audio post, photo post, etc.), and instead all types of content are better integrated into a single post. pretty neat, right?

…until you read the fine print.

The maximum number of total content blocks allowed in a single post is 250.

i emailed support and asked whether each paragraph counts as a content block. i received this reply:

SO. each paragraph counts as a content block, and i’m only allowed 250 content blocks in one post. the solution provided was to reformat my fics by using shift+enter after every paragraph instead of simply enter. which is already unnecessarily annoying in of itself, but then you come to the second hurdle: 

The maximum character length of a single text block is 4096 characters.

so–what?? besides spending my time writing thousands upon thousands of words, i’m expected to copy-paste it and then reformat everything, counting every single one of those words to make sure they fit within the restrictions? or i’m supposed to chop my fics up into multiple parts, even when i don’t want to? how exactly are writers supposed to write on this platform?? as you all know, my style tends to run pretty dialogue-heavy, so i start new paragraphs (and, thus, content blocks!!!) pretty damn often. i did a quick check, and let it snow, at almost 19k, is 550 paragraphs. with this new system, i would be forced to upload it in three (3!!!!!) posts! even my shortest chapter of ego, at 8.8k, is 350 paragraphs, and i’d have to split it in two.

this is honestly a formatting nightmare as a writer, and this is a decision that is liable to drive content creators away from the site and change fandom culture as a whole. 

please. if you enjoy reading content on this site and want to continue enjoying content on this site, please don’t let tumblr make things harder for writers! since the tumblr team is supposedly eager to hear what everyone thinks, it would really help if you could message support and share your concern about the issue–maybe we can stop this disaster before it starts.

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so

we have this app called toogoodtogo where restaurants/cafes/bakeries/hotels and so on sell their leftovers for really cheap to reduce foodwaste

i got all of this for €4 from starbucks

bless

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Day 286 of quarantine I have discovered www.webstaurantstore.com

It is, I BELIEVE, a website intended to be used by restaurants for bulk ordering food and utensils. And this is bringing me such unbounded delight scrolling through and recognizing that I, a single individual, ALSO can order ridiculous obscene enormous offensive-to-all-common-sensibilities shipments of BULK FOOD, to my LITTLE LITTLE APARTMENT, for PENNIES on the dollar. I have this god given power to flood my entire living space with bulk grains and it is one single button click away from my reality.

30 POUNDS of chocolate for $100. 20 POUNDS of peas for $13?? $13!!!! I will wake up every single morning from now on knowing that a box of donuts and a sack of dried split peas heavy enough to bodily injure someone both carry equal monetary weight. 25 POUNDS OF ONION POWDER for $50. Do you understand the enormity? the accessibility? the potential here? With the single click of the button I can put myself in a position of bequeathing more than a humanly comprehensible amount of onion powder in my will. AND IT WOULD ONLY COST ME $50 TO MAKE THIS A REALITY.

But what gets me

What truly gets me

is the 50 POUND BAG OF RICE 

FOR LESS THAN $20

Do you know how much that kills me? How much I’m losing my mind? that I can order MYSELF WORTH OF RICE for something to the tune of $50? I can OUT-RANK MYSELF WITH RICE, DEMOCRATICALLY OVERRULE MYSELF WITH RICE, IN MY OWN APARTMENT for the fucking PENNIES that is $50

I’m so sorry for the normal person I’ll be after quarantine because the cabin-fever version of me I’m inhabiting right now is perhaps just uninhibited enough to follow through on this dream I’ve just discovered of out-ricing myself.

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vt

I hope this posts in order! @twink-on-the-brink​ @gracefulvaudeville​

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In devastating news today, 26 Oct 2020, VicRoads has destroyed 300 years of living cultural heritage.

The Directions Tree (pictured above) was felled today at around 1.30 pm Australian Eastern Standard time.

This tree was over 300 years old. It was a place where the Djabwarrung people could go to seek spiritual guidance and to feel connected to their ancestors.

And it was cut down today, to make way for a road that has multiple other viable routes.

This has been an ongoing battle since 2018. There have been protectors on site since June 2018, and multiple attempts over the years by VicRoads to bully or intimidate protestors off the land, including getting the police to show up in drives to arrest protectors. Police have also spent the last two years specifically targeting known protectors, going so far as to jailing one (indigenous) man for six months because he had an expired drivers licence. When that one finally made it to a judge, the judge was disgusted and and threw the whole case out, cause who the hell imprisons someone for six months for having an expired licence?? Cops with a vendetta, thats who.

There have been multiple legal challenges from multiple directions over the route of this road, and the fact that the planned route requires the destruction of three indigenous heritage sites. There is an open court case at the moment, set for December, and by moving ahead with works and destroying one of the sites, VicRoads is in direct contravention of a court order.

Not only did they cut it down, they also then loaded the tree onto a truck and drove it up and down the stretch of road past one of the other sites where the protectors are camped. They know full well how devastating this destruction is, and they drove thw felled tree back and forth in front of the people who've spent three years protecting this tree, deliberately taunting them.

The destruction of the Directions Tree is an abominable crime. And its one that they want to commit again. Theres a Grandfather tree -- over 700 years old -- that is next in their firing line.

If youre in Australia, please call or email Dan Andrews (Victorian premier), Sussan Ley (Federal Environment Minister) or your local MP and protest the destruction of the Directions Tree, and ask them to protect the Grandfather Tree.

If youre international, please email them. Feel free to call, too, but international rates are pricey, and them getting flooded by international emails will be really, really helpful and will show them that the world's eyes are on them.

Dan Andrews: daniel.andrews@parliament.vic.gov.au . Phone number: 03 9651 5000.

Sussan Ley: sussan.ley.mp@aph.gov.au . Phone number: 02 6277 7920.

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Homestuck Browser

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If you have a Duolingo account, please consider upvoting this request to add Coptic to their language courses.

Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian language. It is currently endangered, with less than 300 Egyptians speaking it as their native tongue.

It would mean a great deal to indigenous Egyptians in the Coptic community to have our language preserved, and this would be a huge step forward.

If you don’t have a Duolingo account, considering sharing this with those who might. Thank you! <3

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When the coronavirus temporarily shuttered businesses across the country, Alexi Minko was nearly ready to give up on his bar, Alibi Lounge. 

“I was 75% done with the business,” Minko said to NowThis. “I was wondering, was it worth it?”

But after a prolific GoFundMe campaign and what he describes as a renewed sense of responsibility, Minko said Alibi Lounge is thriving, even in the middle of a pandemic. 

[...]

This March, Alibi Lounge temporarily closed due to the coronavirus. Minko said he was rejected twice for assistance from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which chains including Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House were not. He then reached out to the Small Business Association's Network for LGBT Businesses and got approved for a PPP loan. 

(Source)

Here's the link to Alibi's GoFundMe

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GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3

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I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

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The friendsims have given us a very easy and homstuck feeling way of creating lusii. that is just taking pictures of animals and editing them. I’ll show you how to edit these images to get the best results using Photoshop CS5

Step 1: Find your animal

Either of these highland cows will do.

Keep reading

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if you are under 18:

your nudes are child pornography 

people you send them to can be charged with possession of child pornography

you can be charged with distribution of child pornography 

don’t take nudes

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How to evaluate historical claims (historiography 101)

So I’ve spent months and many posts trying to disentangle some bizarre claims made by people with their own ideological motivations regarding certain historical events.. but instead of trying to make you believe me I wanna explain how to evaluate these claims yourself

1. Bias; literally everyone has bias, it’s unavoidable because we’re people. Consider the bias of the person making the claim as well as their agenda/why they’re telling you this.

2. Sources; sadly this is becoming more and more prominent in every field. Anyone who asks you to set aside the entirety of academic (peer reviewed) research to focus exclusively on their sources (blog posts, YouTube videos etc) is in the danger zone. Yes, there are things that mainstream thought has gotten wrong and is still being studied - weight science is a good example of this. Weight science is controversial and dogged by completing interests, and yet the science of HAES, set point weight theory and rejecting weight loss as a goal.. is actual science! With actual scientific research, even if it’s not (yet) mainstream, there is a growing body of evidence supporting it. On the other hand, no serious expert in the field of climate science believes that global warming is a hoax.

3. Peer review/consensus; as above, being able to critically evaluate sources of information is crucial. The gold standard is peer review, which means a number of experts in the field have confirmed the work to be correct, so there’s consensus about it. Sometimes there are revisionist views and new research and these can be important too, but again, what has the critical response been?

4. Breadth; following on from the above, there are people who will (ironically) claim the entire discipline of history is dogged with propaganda and therefore can’t be trusted. Thankfully, you can read a wide variety of perspectives on the same topics and compare/contrast them, e.g. you can read communist history of the USSR or liberal history of it. If that’s not possible because you’re short on time or cash, finding a summary of new research on a specific topic is a close second since it discusses different views and how historical thought about the topic has changed over time. Remember you can email the authors asking for a copy for free if the summary is paywalled. This goes back to consensus; you’re looking at what different authors agree on, as a good literature review will do too.

5. Primary sources; you’re probably not going to encounter many primary sources unless you have a special interest but if you do, remember that these cannot be taken as truth and must be understood in terms of a) the bias and agenda of the author b) who they were intending to read it/who they were trying to influence, c) the cultural context of the authors time that would’ve shaped their perspective. Eg. Holocaust denier David Irving used primary sources from Nazi propaganda news sources but instead of reading them with a critical eye, he took them as truth at face value (discussed below).

6. Manipulation; this ties in with most of the above but needs to be dealt with on its own. A lot of misinformation begins with a kernel of truth and the most adept liars can construct arguments that are very difficult for any non-expert to sort through. Holocaust denier David Irving was an expert at this. He used German primary sources, most of it on paper in German archives, which meant you would not only have to understand German but physically go to these places to check his sources. Eventually that happened and it turned out that he used Nazi propaganda and took it as total truth instead of examining it appropriately as a primary source like we discussed above. He misrepresented facts from this propaganda and took confirmed facts about the holocaust and manipulated them, leaving out half a sentence that proved the opposite of his claim sometimes. For example, the gas the Nazis used to commit genocide against Jewish and Romani people, Zyklon B, was indeed a pesticide and a small amount of it was used that way by the Nazis (the bulk obviously was used in the gas chambers). Irving took that grain of truth and concocted his lie that the gas chambers were delousing chambers. It may seem ridiculous in retrospect but he was a published author, not a professional historian but a very competent German speaker who was able to present his work in a way that looked academic; he had quotes, he had sources all properly referenced both in text and in extensive bibliographies, he made deductions based on physical evidence and framed them as ‘new evidence’. Without already being familiar with the subject material, these tricks are convincing! This is why peer review is so important. So if anyone says ‘you can’t trust anything within the mainstream education system’, there’s a good chance they’re going to give you some complete lies.

Conclusion; I am freaked out on the daily by the bizarre claims people make about history. The people making these claims will routinely dismiss the entire body of academic research without even having read any of it and instead exclusively read personal blogs and the like because they’ve developed this conviction that nothing else can be trusted due to Propaganda, Bias and The Culture War. This is why I keep saying that history is the most important discipline to study - though I’m absolutely biased myself. But point being, the real key here is critical thinking combined with broad research from reliable sources. I’m always happy to share my opinion on controversial topics and cite my sources but believing someone because they seem informed and you trust them is dangerous as well - Irving convinced people the same way.

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http://www.ijreview.com/2016/01/524662-real-estate-agent-shares-family-secret-to-keeping-burglars-at-bay/?author=kbn&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=owned&utm_campaign=life&utm_term=ijamerica