#I've seen this take on tumblr so many times

[charles-leclerc-official]

Would you say Schumacher bled Ferrari? (This is a genuine question I'm not trying to get you into messy shit) This was simply inspired by that one tumblr text post: (https://www.tumblr.com/mugellocircuit/713170981288607744/i-hate-ferrari-and-i-love-ferrari-i-love-ferrari?source=share)

And how they say "Michael loved Ferrari and Ferrari loved him back". I hope Ferrari loves Charles the way it loved Michael, I hope they help him bring that same glory back to the team and back to Maranello.

Follow up question is, do you think there's ever been a driver who lives, breathes and bleeds Ferrari like Charles does? Because I genuinely don't think I've ever seen any other driver with quite that amount of devotion to a team (a cult)

I think there have been many drivers who feel this way. They are usually the ones who had the commitment to stay with the team even through the hard times because in their mind it was worth it. Ferrari can be a demanding mistress but she gives glory to those who are truly devoted to her.

I think Charles is unique in the sense that he's for sure the first one in a long time to truly be the most openly insane about Ferrari. Like concerningly insane, and of course that resonates with us Tifosi, because we too are insane. Ferrari do love Charles as much as they love him and they are doing everything to give him a championship worthy car.

However I do not think he is alone, Ferrari has a way of just getting to drivers in a way no other team does. If there is one thing I can be certain of is that Ferrari will have another driver who is as devoted to the team as Charles. It's just what the red car does to people.

Some of my favorite quotes from Ferrari drivers(current and former)

"A part of my heart will always be red." - Michael Schumacher "Without my team I am nothing" - Michael at Imola 2000

Michael had his good times and his struggles at Ferrari but he is only ever saying one team has a place in his heart. That quote from Imola is especially emotional because 2000 was his first Ferrari championship(he didn't know it at the time) and to be there at Imola and just love the whole team and appreciate what that race means. I feel like that says a lot.

"People don't know exactly how much I love Ferrari. I won my only title with her." - Kimi Raikkonen.

Given the man he was and the many struggles he had with that team people didn't outwardly see the love he had for that team the same way they do with someone like Charles. But a man like Kimi stayed with that team as long as he did because he loved them. He doesn't say much, and complains a lot, but in the end he is still in love with Ferrari. (Also note his use of her yeah that man was so gone for the red car)

"For me Ferrari is my heart, Mercedes my wallet" - Niki Lauda

Niki telling it like it is. Most other teams are just that, other teams. A fast car and a paycheck. Ferrari is the team that you take with you as a driver forever, the only team, the only car that actually meant more than the surface level adrenaline of racing and winning.

"Once you have raced for Ferrari you will remain a Ferrari driver forever" - Stefan Johansson

"There are a lot of fairy tales about Ferrari and how it feels to drive a red car. In the end I can only confirm these fairy tales." - Sebastian Vettel

There is a mythical reverence drivers have for the team. At least the ones who truly feel a deep connection to Ferrari. Simply getting to drive that red car is a spiritual experience for many.

"The red car, even before I knew it was called Ferrari, was my obsession" - Charles Leclerc

"When I dream of being world champion one day, in my mind I wear a red racing suit and get out of a red car" - Charles Leclerc

"Ferrari is my life" - Charles Leclerc

"Ferrari means to me everything . . . it is an incredible honor to be a part of this team that now became a family . . . now my own dream remains, a dream that writes itself in red." - Charles Leclerc(2024 and beyond contract renewal announcement)

He composed music to Ferrari. He loves F1 but it doesn't make sense in his head unless he is in a red car and in a red suit.

I will end this section with the one and only quote:

"Everyone is a Ferrari fan. Even if they say they're not, they are Ferrari fans." - Sebastian Vettel

Forza Ferrari

[x-liv25-jamieswife]

unpopular(ish) tig opinions/mostly just me ranting

a few people have done this so here are mine (also just me ranting)

this one isn't super controversial but i don't really like alisa. she's nice and all, but the way she treats libby is just so weird to me and i can't bring myself to love her.

most people in this fandom are grayson stans but my fav is jameson. i love grayson, don't get me wrong, but i feel like his character is sort of overdone. i mean, almost all love interests nowadays are moody, broody, i never smile except when im with you. im happy avery ended up with jamie not just cause they fit together, but bc, for once, the love interest isn't the broody type (like i said, love grayson dont hate me)

i commented this under a post, and i don't think this is super unpopular but im lyra neutral. i literally cannot love a character unless i know them (i dont hate her either, i just don't have an opinion)

ok, this one might get me some hate, but, although grayson had the right to be mad in tig bc avery inherited the money, i do think he did go too far sometimes. there's this one time, where he was just unnecessarily rude to avery, telling her she didn't know what it was like to suffer (midway through to book, don't remember the chapter but its there and it makes no sense bc she grew up with no money while this dude is a privileged white man, like all of his brothers (except for xander cause he isn't white)). like i said, he had the right to be mad, but avery did nothing to him, and, so, he had no right to say some of the things he said to her. he does get better, and he does apologize (i think, but even if he doesn't idc cause hes nice to her now). like i said, he had the right to be mad cause i mean he did grow up thinking he'd inherit and he didn't, but he shouldn't have taken out all of his anger on her. he had the right to doubt her and think she had ulterior motives, but he had no right to accuse her of being a gold digger when she had done NOTHING to gray for him think that (dont take this as me not liking gray, he's one of my fav characters ever (but no one beats jamie (and nash)))

idk if this one will make sense and ik some people will agree with me if this does, but the way avery is treated in this fandom is really shitty. she's pretty much only mentioned when people are talking about the love triangle. she's bashed bc she didn't choose grayson (which she had the right to bc jamie was made for her and gray wasn't), her trauma is super overlooked. i wish people would pay more attention to her. also, i mentioned this earlier, but some people (not many but some) let other people (like gray and thea) get away will at the mean things they said to avery bc they're their favorite characters. (obviously, they can be your fav characters. my best friend's fav character is gray, and, when i first read the books, i liked gray over jamie for a small period of time, but its wrong to let them get away things just bc you like them.

people will agree with me, but jameson and grayson's trauma should NOT be compared. trauma is trauma no matter how "bad" it is (note the quotation marks around bad). ive mostly seen people compare jamie to gray saying that gray's trauma is worse which is so fucking mean. they both have trauma. they both have it bad. no one should be comparing. i will make a longer post about this bc this is smth i'm very passionate about and it pisses me off. (ive lost count of the amount of times ive compared my trauma to others thinking i had no right to complain bc others had it worse, so don't do it to fictional characters plsss)

the tiktok/insta fandom sucks. the amount of averygrayson shippers ive seen bash avery on those platforms is too much. the only healthy part of the fandom is on tumblr.

not controversial but thea is not a girl boss, she's just a mean girl. she's not iconic.

people should not bash people for their favorite characters. i've seen this mostly on older posts (like before tfg was released) but some people will go 'xander's my fav' or 'avery's my fav' and people in the comments would go 'but grayson exists' or 'but jameson exists'. let people like who they want to like. all characters are great (mostly, i hate thea and all of the bad guys).

i couldn't care less about eve's redemption arc. she ruined toby's life, and as someone who loves toby and avery's father-daughter dynamic, i will never forgive her. she also treated grayson horribly, basically got alisa kidnapped (cause alisa wouldn't have gotten kidnapped if eve hadn't gotten toby kidnapped), and more so if she ever does get a redemption arc, i will be throwing hands.

if i see people complaining about lyra's character when tgg comes out bc 'they were expecting someone different' i will be pissed. im sure lyra will be great (hopefully). it doesn't matter if she's a girl boss or a more like rebecca.

grayson is not 'the most misunderstood character in the fandom'. he's literally the most popular character. people are constantly gushing about him and his trauma. other characters like avery, jameson, and xander (and others) are so much more misunderstood. no ones takes the time to understand them like they do with grayson. people are constantly talking about his trauma, and how people shouldn't hate him bc he's 'misunderstood'. people have the right to hate him, and his trauma isn't overlooked as the fandom's most popular character. he is a complex character, and i will be making in depth posts about him bc i find him interesting and i really like his character, but he's the most understood character in the fandom. i've noticed that people tend to say he's misunderstood right after coming up with the most nonsensical take defending all of his actions saying that he has trauma (trauma is not an excuse its an explanation)

even if grayson would've gotten up to help avery after the bombing 1. he would've never gotten there on time and 2. he might have gotten more hurt.

i said this earlier while talking about gray but trauma is not an excuse its an explanation. do with that what you will. i just have to repeat it.

people who claim jameson was not affected by emily's trauma are the bane of my existence (yes, they exist, i've seen them)

ik i mentioned gray a lot in this and it might seem like i don't like him, but i swear i LOVE him. i find his character very interesting and complex and i really wanna analyze his character once i'm done rereading. i just hate toxic grayson stans (most of yall aren't, but they exist)

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Okay but now I'm actually fascinated about these complaints you're getting. Who has the time? Who complained about Vash of all characters??? How is the Dungeon Meshi fandom this entitled already? So many questions. Soldier on, brave poll taker. You are in the trenches.

The complaints are why I finally decided you know what. Is anyone interested in me publishing some of these stupid essays because I've been getting them since the first week everyone's got an opinion. Internet anonymity gives people the audacity to say anything they want. Combine that with how socially conscious Tumblr is and the amount of activism you see on it does create this issue for me. Even though as I've stated this performative activism does nothing to actually help people but it makes the Anon feel good so that's why I'm in this situation.

Vash was part of the extensive list of blonde characters someone wanted banned for promoting white colonial beauty standards. A couple people have asked me to go ahead and list them all which I'm working on but I forgot how long that list was. I screenshot it but I am going through and organizing it by fandom. So it's going to take a little while.

Someone sent me an ask explaining why they think Dungeon Meshi got so entitled so quickly and I think they're right. So I should probably answer that already.

What I'm dealing with now is nothing compared to my worst fandom experience on Tumblr which led to me blocking every tag related to that fandom, unfollowing or blocking several blogs. Basically I had to go full scorched Earth. I will not be watching any continuing seasons even though I loved that show just because I can't do it. The fandom absolutely ruined the show for me and I cannot separate what the fandom did to me from the show and It's sad the new season does look good from the few clips I've seen but I just can't. It's a miracle. I'm still on Tumblr because I nearly quit it for good after what happened.

[sokkastyles]

Hi,

Hope you are doing well. Thank you for the response on EIP.

I was reading the post made by tumblr user @sneezypeasy on the script of The Last Airbender regarding Kataang. One thing that caught me was the Day of Black Sun kiss between Aang and Katara. In the script, after the surprise kiss Katara is written as smiling. This means that she reciprocates Aang's feelings. But, the show presents her as unhappy. This means that she did not want to kiss Aang and she probably does not share his feelings.

The post even mentions the rumor of the scene being revised. This revision actually creates a problem. Visuals will stick in a person's head longer. By showing Katara's reaction as unhappy, it means that the feelings do across as one sided. And it can easily be interpreted that Katara is not interested in Aang. The script to screen translation was ruined, because while people can ship what they want, on screen people will remember Katara's unhappy reaction.

I would like your thoughts on this.

You are absolutely right about how visuals need to match intention, and I definitely think that's a big reason why this scene is a point of such contention. However, I personally don't think the frown necessarily indicates that she has no interest in Aang romantically. There are many reasons why she might be frowning in that moment, and to me, the big one is that he kissed her right before leaving her. If you think back to Katara's anger at Aang for flying off in "The Awakening," and how it was connected to her trauma over her dad leaving, you understand why this moment is so traumatic for Katara, not because she doesn't care about Aang but because she cares about him. And maybe somewhere in there there are romantic feelings, but I think Aang really takes Katara's feelings for granted, frankly. His kiss here is probably the most explicit he has ever been to Katara about his feelings for her, and he doesn't even give her any time to process it before flying right into danger.

The post I reblogged recently by @ecoterrorist-katara about KA and compulsory heterosexuality talks a lot about this, and a lot of the KA scenes are framed in terms of idealizing the idea that Katara should want Aang, without actually showing us her feelings or taking account that Katara might have her own issues to deal with, and a lot of Katara's issues center around abandonment, and we already know she projects those feelings onto Aang.

That was why she was unhappy in DoBS, and then Aang assuming ownership of her in EIP because of it, when Katara wasn't even allowed to process her feelings over it, certainly didn't help matters.

And Aang does assume ownership of her because of it. He says, "we kissed at the invasion, and I thought we were gonna be together, but we're not." And you can be sure that him ignoring her protests and kissing her a few seconds later also happened because he thought that kissing her once meant he was entitled to do it again. I've seen this attitude from fans, too, that the violation in EIP wasn't that bad because he kissed her before. So let me reiterate that it doesn't matter how into Aang Katara is or whether they kissed before, there is no blanket universal consent to another person's body, and Katara was saying and signaling that she did not want to be kissed in that moment, even if they had had the proper time to process and talk about what happened at the invasion or if Katara had been smiling.

[decolonize-the-left]

You know

I keep running across the ideas that "I don't owe anyone anything. I'm not obligated to help or take care of anyone except myself" and "I'm not toxic for taking care of myself" being used as justifiable reasons to set boundaries that would deprive someone else of their needs.

Specifically in the sense that people who need support- people like the mentally ill, insecure, traumatized, or otherwise- are not entitled to anyone's support. That their feelings and needs are their responsibility and their responsibility alone to manage, especially in contexts where their needs can affect someone else's ability to take care of themselves.

Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

For so many reasons this logic is disgusting but primarily because it's abusive. Like really listen to yourselves. Broken down this line of thinking absolutely normalizes the ideas that it's okay for relationships to be unbalanced, that viewing relationships as dehumanizing transactions is progressive, that it's Okay to ignore your friend/partner's unmet needs, that relationships don't exist for both people to enjoy but that they exist for your pleasure and personal growth.

But they are entitled to outside support actually, ESPECIALLY from friends and their partner(s). And if YOU personally can not provide that kind of support then that means that you personally are not the kind of friend or partner they need. It means YOU can't handle being their friend. It means they aren't entitled to that care from You specifically. It doesn't mean they aren't entitled to it at all. So if you are what's standing between them and their needs then respond accordingly and exit the relationship. Because your boundaries do not give you the right to deprive someone else of their needs. Period.

A boundary is not "I can't handle this so YOU change your behavior (and stop asking for x) to make sure you don't cross this boundary"

A boundary is "I can't handle this so if you cross this boundary I will change MY behavior in any way I need to in order to prevent it from happening again"

Other people aren't Toxic or whatever for unapologetically having needs that you can't provide. They aren't toxic for Expecting their friends/partner to help them get their needs met either. It isnt toxic for literally ANYONE to ask and expect their needs to be met.

That said, I know not everyone is capable of meeting everyone else's needs. And that's okay. You don't need to meet Every single need your friend/partner has. You don't need to be capable of meeting the needs of every single person you come across either. People also have a variety of needs and those needs can be completely different from person to person.

Find the people you ACTUALLY fit together with. Find the people who's needs you CAN meet.

It's okay to get into a relationship and then find out you're not a good match. That's literally fine, it's part of the human experience. There is no law that says you have to stay friends or completely change who you are to be compatible. Being incompatible isn't toxic. You're not a bad person for being able to admit when a relationship would be unhealthy for you or someone else to stay in.

Sometimes it'll be sad or frustrating because aside from incompatible needs maybe you're completely compatible, maybe they're the coolest person you've ever met, maybe you love them more than you loved anyone, maybe you share Everything in common... But none of that is a good enough reason to stay in a relationship or friendship where someone is being dehumanized.

Your boundaries are not a good enough reason to justify dehumanizing the people around you. You are not Entitled to dehumanize others just because you can't meet their needs. And they aren't obligated to put up with it.

So no it's not toxic to look out for yourself, but that idea is not mutually exclusive from the idea that it is toxic to think you deserve to stay in relationships where your behavior and choices cause harm to the other person. And it's insidious that there are people who have heard this line and then gone on to call their mentally ill friends "red flags" for having the audacity to be higher support than they personally could handle. That is toxic.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Hrmm... put together a roommates quiz finally after years of thinking it would be an interesting idea lol.. Though obviously not meant to be taken super seriously, I just like thinking about this aspect of personality compatibility. Like yeah, maybe you could get along with someone just chatting with them, but living together is such a different thing. .. curiouse...

[meownotgood]

Omg if tumblr doesn’t release you from the shackles of shadow ban could you possible just make a side account? 👀

I may end up doing that, but it's only going to be a last resort..... for now, I'll continue as normal on this blog. if tumblr keeps me in prison for more than a few weeks, then I'll consider switching over to another blog. I don't really care about the engagement my smaller drabbles get since I mostly write those for myself, but I'll hold off on posting any big projects until the issue is resolved or I've moved over to another blog

[neverendingford]

.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

FYI artists and writers: some info regarding tumblr's new "third-party sharing" (aka selling your content to OpenAI and Midjourney)

You may have already seen the post by @staff regarding third-party sharing and how to opt out. You may have also already seen various news articles discussing the matter.

But here's a little further clarity re some questions I had, and you may too. Caveat: Not all of this is on official tumblr pages, so it's possible things may change.

(1) "I heard they already have access to my data and it doesn't really matter if I opt out"

From the 404 article:

A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.”

So please, go click that opt-out button.

(2) Some future user: "I've been away from tumblr for months, and I just heard about all this. I didn't opt out before, so does it make a difference anymore?"

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?” Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.”

It should make a difference! Go click that button.

(3) "I opted out, but my art posts have been reblogged by so many people, and I don't know if they all opted out. What does that mean for my stuff?"

This answer is actually on the support page for the toggle:

This option will prevent your blog's content, even when reblogged, from being shared with our licensed network of content and research partners, including those that train AI models.

And some further clarification by the COO and a product manager:

zingring: A couple people from work have reached out to let me know that yes, it applies to reblogs of "don't scrape" content. If you opt out, your content is opted out, even in reblog form. cyle: yep, for reblogs, we're taking it so far as "if anybody in the reblog trail has opted out, all of the content in that reblog will be opted out", when a reblog could be scraped/shared.

So not only your reblogged posts, but anyone who contributed in a reblog (such as posts where someone has been inspired to draw fanart of the OP) will presumably be protected by your opt-out. (A good reason to opt out even if you yourself are not a creator.)

Furthermore, if you the OP were offline and didn't know about the opt-out, if someone contributed to a reblog and they are opted out, then your original work is also protected. (Which makes it very tempting to contribute "scrapeable content" now whenever I reblog from an abandoned/disused blog...)

(4) "What about deleted blogs? They can't opt out!"

I was told by someone (not official) that he read "deleted blogs are all opted-out by default". However, he didn't recall the source, and I can't find it, so I can't guarantee that info. If I get more details - like if/when tumblr puts up that FAQ as reported in the 404 article - I will add it here as soon as I can.

Edit, tumblr has updated their help page for the option to opt-out of third-party sharing! It now states:

The content which will not be shared with our licensed network of content and research partners, including those that train AI models, includes: • Posts and reblogs of posts from blogs who have enabled the "Prevent third-party sharing" option. • Posts and reblogs of posts from deleted blogs. • Posts and reblogs of posts from password-protected blogs. • Posts and reblogs of posts from explicit blogs. • Posts and reblogs of posts from suspended/deactivated blogs. • Private posts. • Drafts. • Messages. • Asks and submissions which have not been publicly posted. • Post+ subscriber-only posts. • Explicit posts.

So no need to worry about your old deleted blogs that still have reblogs floating around. *\o/*

But for your existing blogs, please use the opt out option. And a reminder of how to opt out, under the cut:

The opt-out toggle is in Blog Settings, and please note you need to do it for each one of your blogs / sideblogs.

On dashboard, the toggle is at https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/blogname [replace "blogname" as applicable] down by Visibility:

For mobile, you need the most recent update of the app. (Android version 33.4.1.100, iOs version 33.4.) Then go to your blog tab (the little person icon), and then the gear icon for Settings, then click Visibility.

Again, if you have a sideblog, go back to the blog tab, switch to it, and go to settings again. Repeat as necessary.

If you do not have access to the newest version of the app for whatever reason, you can also log into tumblr in your mobile browser. Same URL as per desktop above, same location.

Note you do not need to change settings in both desktop and the app, just one is fine.

I hope this helps!

[comradecowplant]

Look, I might perform gold medal Olympian level time wasting when I'm in a depression hole, but at least I've never spent any amount of time "playing" with chatgpt or any of that other wannabe AI crap. There is no amount of garbage tv consumption that will ever be as cringe as the folks who gleefully recount the hours spent fiddling mediocre LLMs like they're pioneers of the future 🙄

[crustaceousfaggot]

An outsider's knowledge of The Locked Tomb series, based on what I've seen from Tumblr.

So it's a series of books. Idk how many they are (at least 3? And they're still coming out) but I'm pretty sure they all have the suffix "the ninth". Idk what this means.

One of the books is called "Nona the ninth" but I feel like I never hear people talking about a character named Nona so idk what that's about

The two protagonists are Harrowhark and Gideon. They're very much in love but also I think there's some elements of Toxic Yuri at play. Not like enemies to lovers but more of like a codependency thing I think?

At some point one of them eats someone I think?

Harrow is the little goth one and she's like. Angry and bitey and very wetpathetic like a gutter cat.

Gideon is the taller ginger one who's a bit more butch. She's also angry and bitey but less so? I am attracted to her.

Harrowhark and Gideon are part of like... An order of space nuns who do necromancy. It seems like Harrow takes this responsibility more seriously and Gideon just wants to fuck around and look at tits.

That's why they have the skull makeup. Because they're Necro Nuns

Idk why Harrow is always drawn with the Bone Corset thing but Gideon isn't. Idk if this is just because she's Like That or if it's like... A separate uniform she has for whatever reason.

There's a lot of angst derived from how Harrow is like... Indoctrinated and controlled and lacks agency in her own life.

Harrow and Gideon are separated at some point and fans are very keen to see them reunited. Maybe. I might be making that part uo

There's a blonde woman named Ianthe? Idk what she does though. That's the only other character I know about.

As far as I know there are no men. Or at least no men worth talking about.

I'm not sure what the titular Locked Tomb is all about. Presumably something to do with necromancy.

You know for a series that people call the "lesbian necromancer series" I feel like I rarely hear people discussing the necromancy parts.

I'm also unclear on the time period and setting. I think it's set in space but idk if it's like a far-future thing or an alternate universe or...?

There's a lot of perspective-hopping. I think it also switches between 1st and 3rd person POV which is neat I suppose

I heard somewhere that it's loosely based off of a Homestuck fanfic but idk if that's true

[neroushalvaus]

Okay I am going to use the Somerton situation to talk about something that is very important to me. Following the discussion I have seen former Somerton fans being disappointed in themselves and questioning how they can ever trust another video essayist again. I have also seen some people being smug because to them Somerton was obviously unreliable from the start. As a person who also saw the "red flags" in Somerton, I would like to skip the smugness and talk a bit about what the red flags were to me.

Someone else has probably posted something similar and Hbomberguy's & Todd in the Shadows's videos touched a few of these points, but they didn't focus on them or how to spot these things. I think it is a good thing: I think it would have reinforced the idea that Somerton's fans were to blame for being lied to, and these youtubers didn't want to pin any blame on the fans. Also, some of the things I'm going to talk about were not by any means proof of him being unreliable, they were common tropes I personally associate with people who are bullshitting on internet. Think of it as something like spotting terfs: If you consider following a tumblr user and find out they have at some point posted "males will always be a danger to females no matter what they say", it is very possible that they are not a terf. Maybe they were having a bad day and were just wording their post badly – But you should probably search "trans" from their blog before following them, just to be sure.

So, the tropes in James Somerton's content that I consider red flags:

Lack of sources. This one may seem obvious and Hbomb talked about this in his video, but the lack of sources in his videos was outrageous. Video essays are called essays for a reason, they are not supposed to be just a guy talking about whatever comes to his mind, they should be well researched essays. Obviously video essays should contain one's own thoughts and interpretations and those do not need citations. But James Somerton didn't come out of the womb knowing everything about LGBT history, Disney and film theory, if he actually knew something about all this stuff, he should have learnt it from somewhere. There should be sources he could point to. It is very common that even when a video essayist doesn't tell you where they got all their information, they open their video by saying stuff like "when I prepared for this video I read the book Also sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche and this one thrilling blog post about lesbian cruising in 1960s Sweden". From what I've seen, James does not really do this. From watching his videos you could arrive to the conclusion that James Somerton does not read any books, he just knows everything. There are situations where people don't feel the need to add sources, like when the information is considered common knowledge or when the topic relates heavily to the essayist's actual academic field or profession. This is okay and very understandable, but can sometimes be dangerous, since if the video essayist markets himself as a marketing specialist, people are more likely to take his word for stuff that has to do with marketing, even without sources. It is understandable that in many situations an essayist may think "why should I cite a source? I know this thing!", but doing your research well is partly about checking if the information you are certain of is actually true. Also, as Hbomb pointed out, if you can cite a source, your audience can go learn more about the subject. It's not about anyone doubting you know your stuff, it's about learning. That's why well-respected video essayists usually cite their sources very clearly.

Lack of pictures and screenshots. This is about different kinds of sources again, many things on this list are kind of about sources. An example: When James Somerton made a video about JKR, he mentioned something about Rowling at one time saying that trans students in 30-50Feralhogs (or whatever the wizard school is called) could use magic to present as their gender. If this was any other video essayist, you'd expect a tweet to pop up, or something else confirming Rowling ever said this. Nothing pops up, obviously because Rowling didn't say this, but you can't see anything fishy in that because things rarely pop up in Somerton's videos. He doesn't show you court documents when speaking about a court case, he doesn't show you the comments apparently mad at him for implying the gay anime is gay when he is complaining about people being mad at him. There is a reason people show screenshots and tweets in video essays. When a good video essayist says JK Rowling has tweeted that all people who menstruate should be referred to as women, the video essayist shows the tweet so people know they are not making it up. If there were hoards of annoying bitc-- I mean, angry white women whining about gay sex in HuffPost articles or Somerton's youtube comments, he should have no trouble showing you those. Remember that you should not trust someone just because they show you pictures or screenshots. Pictures can be photoshopped, screenshots can be doctored. Many youtubers are aware that you listen to their videos while cleaning or while walking your dog and don't actually see the screen all the time, and some may take advantage of that by saying something like "and here she threatened to kill me" while showing a text message where someone said "die mad about it". A screenshot alone isn't much but you should demand to see the screenshot.

Passive voice. I am once again bitching about this. Somerton repeatedly says things like "it's been said that" or "it was common knowledge that" or "a legend says that" or "according to most interpretations". He doesn't say who says it, making it very hard to fact check and that seems to be his goal in some cases.

Relying heavily on anecdotes. Writing a dense, analytical video about film theory or history can be exhausting and you may want to pepper in little fun facts. However Somerton seemed to rely on these heavily; he can't just talk about how he has totally bought every lie told by The Pink Swastika, he also needs to tell a cute little anecdote about SS men forcing sexual favours out of men. He can't just tell a story about a court case, he needs to add in ridiculous stuff about the jury booing. This is what I mean by not all the things on this list being necessarily proof of someone being unreliable. Many people use anecdotes and little stories in their storytelling, it makes the videos flow better and it's hard to decide which anecdotes are valid and which are not. A source obviously makes an anecdote a bit more believable, but here are some things that instantly make me fact check an anecdote:

It's a bit too convenient, poetic or ironic. Sometimes real life is weirder than fiction but if an anecdote is "perfect" and has an amazing punchline and you could write twelve poems about it, there is a possibility it was invented by pop science books.

It assumes your political enemies are stupid. Dunking on conservatives, MRAs and transphobes is always fun and after you've seen a lot of this kind of content it's easy to believe anything about these people. You must resist the impulse to believe everything that may make your opponents look stupid.

The person telling the anecdote implies it is an example of a larger, systemic problem. You know what's worse than taking a random happenstance from human history or internet and basing an entire political theory on it? The said random happenstance being made up. You should in general be wary of people telling one story and explaining why it's an example of everything that's wrong in the world. We live in a huge world. You can always find a white woman who loves cute gays but hates the idea of Nick Heartstopper and Charlie Heartstopper getting nasty but that doesn't mean it's an indicator of a larger issue.

Simplifying complex issues. We all know that "only the boring gays survived the AIDS crisis, and that's why gays started to only care about marriage equality and military" is a horrible, insensitive thing to say, but you also have to think about it for like two seconds to realize that it can't be correct. It kind of reminds me of the "roe v wade caused the crime drop of 1990s" claim in Freakonomics. It sounds logical and simple, like a basic math calculation. Societal issues rarely are like that, though. You should never believe anyone who tells you about a huge societal shift and says it happened because of one thing and one thing only.

These were some of the things I noticed in Somerton's content that caused me to distrust him. I hope these were helpful to you and feel free to add your own "red flags" if you feel like it!

[nostalgebraist]

Honestly I'm pretty tired of supporting nostalgebraist-autoresponder. Going to wind down the project some time before the end of this year.

Posting this mainly to get the idea out there, I guess.

This project has taken an immense amount of effort from me over the years, and still does, even when it's just in maintenance mode.

Today some mysterious system update (or something) made the model no longer fit on the GPU I normally use for it, despite all the same code and settings on my end.

This exact kind of thing happened once before this year, and I eventually figured it out, but I haven't figured this one out yet. This problem consumed several hours of what was meant to be a relaxing Sunday. Based on past experience, getting to the bottom of the issue would take many more hours.

My options in the short term are to

A. spend (even) more money per unit time, by renting a more powerful GPU to do the same damn thing I know the less powerful one can do (it was doing it this morning!), or

B. silently reduce the context window length by a large amount (and thus the "smartness" of the output, to some degree) to allow the model to fit on the old GPU.

Things like this happen all the time, behind the scenes.

I don't want to be doing this for another year, much less several years. I don't want to be doing it at all.

----

In 2019 and 2020, it was fun to make a GPT-2 autoresponder bot.

[EDIT: I've seen several people misread the previous line and infer that nostalgebraist-autoresponder is still using GPT-2. She isn't, and hasn't been for a long time. Her latest model is a finetuned LLaMA-13B.]

Hardly anyone else was doing anything like it. I wasn't the most qualified person in the world to do it, and I didn't do the best possible job, but who cares? I learned a lot, and the really competent tech bros of 2019 were off doing something else.

And it was fun to watch the bot "pretend to be me" while interacting (mostly) with my actual group of tumblr mutuals.

In 2023, everyone and their grandmother is making some kind of "gen AI" app. They are helped along by a dizzying array of tools, cranked out by hyper-competent tech bros with apparently infinite reserves of free time.

There are so many of these tools and demos. Every week it seems like there are a hundred more; it feels like every day I wake up and am expected to be familiar with a hundred more vaguely nostalgebraist-autoresponder-shaped things.

And every one of them is vastly better-engineered than my own hacky efforts. They build on each other, and reap the accelerating returns.

I've tended to do everything first, ahead of the curve, in my own way. This is what I like doing. Going out into unexplored wilderness, not really knowing what I'm doing, without any maps.

Later, hundreds of others with go to the same place. They'll make maps, and share them. They'll go there again and again, learning to make the expeditions systematically. They'll make an optimized industrial process of it. Meanwhile, I'll be locked in to my own cottage-industry mode of production.

Being the first to do something means you end up eventually being the worst.

----

I had a GPT chatbot in 2019, before GPT-3 existed. I don't think Huggingface Transformers existed, either. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

I had a denoising diffusion image generator in 2021, before DALLE-2 or Stable Diffusion or Huggingface Diffusers. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

Earlier this year, I was (probably) one the first people to finetune LLaMA. I manually strapped LoRA and 8-bit quantization onto the original codebase, figuring out everything the hard way. It was fun.

Just a few months later, and your grandmother is probably running LLaMA on her toaster as we speak. My homegrown methods look hopelessly antiquated. I think everyone's doing 4-bit quantization now?

(Are they? I can't keep track anymore -- the hyper-competent tech bros are too damn fast. A few months from now the thing will be probably be quantized to -1 bits, somehow. It'll be running in your phone's browser. And it'll be using RLHF, except no, it'll be using some successor to RLHF that everyone's hyping up at the time...)

"You have a GPT chatbot?" someone will ask me. "I assume you're using AutoLangGPTLayerPrompt?"

No, no, I'm not. I'm trying to debug obscure CUDA issues on a Sunday so my bot can carry on talking to a thousand strangers, every one of whom is asking it something like "PENIS PENIS PENIS."

Only I am capable of unplugging the blockage and giving the "PENIS PENIS PENIS" askers the responses they crave. ("Which is ... what, exactly?", one might justly wonder.) No one else would fully understand the nature of the bug. It is special to my own bizarre, antiquated, homegrown system.

I must have one of the longest-running GPT chatbots in existence, by now. Possibly the longest-running one?

I like doing new things. I like hacking through uncharted wilderness. The world of GPT chatbots has long since ceased to provide this kind of value to me.

I want to cede this ground to the LLaMA techbros and the prompt engineers. It is not my wilderness anymore.

I miss wilderness. Maybe I will find a new patch of it, in some new place, that no one cares about yet.

----

Even in 2023, there isn't really anything else out there quite like Frank. But there could be.

If you want to develop some sort of Frank-like thing, there has never been a better time than now. Everyone and their grandmother is doing it.

"But -- but how, exactly?"

Don't ask me. I don't know. This isn't my area anymore.

There has never been a better time to make a GPT chatbot -- for everyone except me, that is.

Ask the techbros, the prompt engineers, the grandmas running OpenChatGPT on their ironing boards. They are doing what I did, faster and easier and better, in their sleep. Ask them.

[astralnymphh]

CALLING ALL FANFICTION AUTHORS!

please reblog this. i've talked about this twice before, but obviously not everyone has seen it. i am calling for anyone who writes fanfiction or posts about a certain game/show/universe in any connective manner to please, please- PLEASE, copy this memo below comprising links to supporting palestine, education on the situation in gaza, and a must-need for those who engage in TLOU tumblr; links regarding the creators (neil druckmann) zionism, and how the plot of tlou2 is based on the israeli occupation of palestine. i don't care if what you write seems "insignificant" or "small" in the grouping of larger fics. no. everything that is not related to palestine in any form NEEDS these links. because, when we stray away from reblogging, or writing up our own posts in support of palestine/sharing journalists stories/etc. even for a SINGLE piece of writing, we could be missing people who are unaware (which, shouldn't be the case atp, but..) and fucking especially because in these fandoms, fics are the most popular thing. not reblogs about palestine, unfortunately; there are so many fanfiction accounts who very clearly don't give a fuck about the whole situation, seeping in silence, posting fics during strikes, not taking accountability for it now, so on and so forth. please, for the love of all that is good- CALL THEM OUT! people gaining hundreds of notes, tens of reblogs, supportive comments on a post that completely disregards what is happening SO BOLDLY right now, should irk you. i swear, if i see one more fuckass "i didn't know!" apology from an author who is CONSTANTLY on tumblr, REGULARLY posting fanfiction, i'm going to fucking lose it. if you are on tumblr to begin with, being this active- you have time to reblog. actually, educating yourself and reblogging is way quicker than writing up fanfiction of any length. are you fucking kidding me? you are laughable. comical, not real, and i have nay an ounce of respect for you. ever. but besdies that; the memo. i want everyone to copy this, or make something similar. put this above your summaries, authors note, whatever comes before the writing. every post you make should link back to supporting palestine, cause you never know how many eyes it will reach. it could change a lot of things. on pc, i believe copying it completely will preserve the links, but i'm not sure if mobile will. again. do whatever you can to add it. don't be lazy. put this in ur masterlists/navigation too.

for all fanfiction authors:

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸

READ: this account stands with palestine, and so— i require everyone who interacts to educate themselves, and support/donate. READ THESE; 1 and 2, HELP HERE, BOYCOTT. silence is complicity, do not scroll past this.

for tlou fanfiction authors:

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸

READ: this account stands with palestine, and so— i require everyone who interacts to educate themselves, and support/donate. READ THESE; 1 and 2, HELP HERE, BOYCOTT. silence is complicity, do not scroll past this.

DO NOT BUY THE REMASTER, TLOU2, TLOU1, OR ANY GAME FROM NAUGHTY DOG! neil druckmann (the creator) is a zionist. PLEASE READ THIS. AND REBLOG THIS.

you may add what is necessary, i wanted to keep it short for attention span sakes, and to avoid people skipping it entirely, and so on. i may edit these, fix up anything, but again, if you're using them you can edit them however. as long as you are linking anything in general, that is what matters. thank you, love from aestra. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸

[phantomrose96]

I've mentioned this thing in tags before but I've decided fuck it, it should be its own post.

I've seen this sentiment lumped into Eat the Rich posts which goes like "if you're worth more than $1 million I think you should die" and I think tumblr users need to know this is not the Eat the Rich statement they think it is.

Someone being worth $1 million doesn't mean what you think it means.

A 71-year-old widow who bought a single-family 2,000 sqft home in Somerville Massachusetts with her husband 40 years ago to raise their family in, who now lives in this home all alone because her children are grown and her husband is dead, is--without a shadow of a doubt--worth more than $1 million. Maybe even $1.5 or $2 million. And it's because of her home equity, because that's what single family homes go for these days in that area.

The 71-year-old widow may be living pension check to pension check, because her millionaire status can only be dipped into if she's removed from her home and sells it. And if it's the home she's loved for 40 years, where she simply wants to live out the rest of her time peacefully in, I wouldn't put her to the guillotine for that.

Maybe that comes off as an extreme example, like that's just an outlier of the "we hate millionaires" agenda. But I don't think it truly is. I'll scale back and tell you the median U.S. home price right now is about $430,000. And that's just median. Half of them are more expensive than that.

The statement "I think people should be able to afford to buy and own the homes they live in" is, I would desperately hope, not a radical statement to anyone on Tumblr. I think that's a pretty well-received idea. So someone who's done that, who's bought their home and worked many years to pay off the mortgage and now owns it fully, is worth close to half a million dollars on average. Many of them more than that, as many areas rapidly gentrify and drive up housing worth.

Statement 2: "I think people deserve to have a retirement fund which would comfortably support them through end of life." Too radical for anyone? I hope not. And I won't pretend to be an expert on how much retirement money is ideal. I'm sure it varies with cost of living in places. But considering this is money which, ideally, should support someone for the remaining 10-20 years of life (money which may be necessary to cover the absolutely crippling medical costs of end-of-life treatment) I'd bet it's well into the many hundreds of thousands. Even if someone was simply living off $30k/year of take home money and just making that work, then 15 years of retirement, costing $30k/year, plus maybe $50k+ of end-of-life medical costs... That's at least $500k.

Which is all to say, if you show me someone approaching retirement age who's "worth" $1 million dollars, my hope would be that their house is paid off and their retirement fund is comfortable. I'd be happy for them. I would want this for them.

Even that may not be true, though. Someone "worth" $1 million maybe owns a paid-off house which has rapidly appreciated to being worth $900k, and their $100k in retirement is something they're trying to stretch through end of life. Maybe someone worth $1 million owns a house which has ballooned to $1.1 million, and they're in fact $100k in debt.

And the fact that SO many Americans will never even meet this bar is significantly more appalling to me than the existence of people worth more than $1 million. "I own my home and can retire comfortably" is a bar we want every American to meet. I want more millionaires who are millionaires because they meet these criteria.

If Nana Somerville's house burns down tomorrow, she'll have lost everything. If a billionaire were to similarly lose $1 million of worth, he would not feel it. That's a fickle day at the stock market. That's Tuesday. That's the rich which desperately needs to be eaten.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.