#normal mobile app no problems :)

[afriendofmara]

Mobile tumblr users (me) when a post is good

[park-jimin-isnt-real]

tumblr keeps logging me out of my account, has anyone else had this issue? i changed my password a few hours ago and suddenly lost the "keep me logged in" button; but every time i open another blog it immediately kicks me out and i have to log in over and over again. i'm genuinely losing my mind over this, someone tell me this has happened to them and what they did to fix it. i've already sent a support ticket in, so hopefully i'll hear back soon

[cinnbar-bun]

Would you be willing to write what kind of fan would ace, sabo, shanks, and law for the reader!! I loved your last one!!!

You got it dude! Sorry for taking so long.

Ace, Sabo, Law, and Shanks- Reversed AU HCs

AU: In which YOU are the character of a very famous franchise, and they are regular people who are fans of your series.

Note: GN!Reader, crack, very unserious, SFW

Part 1 with Straw Hats here!

Ace

Broke ass guy who can’t afford anything for you minus like, a bootleg or something small. Has buttons of you. 

Highkey think he would be a menace and just wear something so off with you on it (you are free to decide what that looks like). 

If people ask why he’s got you on his phone or like a keychain of you, he just beams and responds that you’re the love of his life and refuses to elaborate. 

Lies, he WILL be elaborating and making it everyone’s problem. 

Marco wants him to shut up about it. 

Thatch jokes around often and makes cakes of you for Ace on his birthday or something. Ace refuses to eat it for like two seconds before he’s quickly trying to fight off the others from taking a slice. 

Whitebeard has not realized you’re fictional and still asks about meeting you soon… he just wants to meet the one his son keeps raving about. 

Ace has to lie and it becomes a whole ‘my partner is in Canada, actually they can’t see you now.’ 

Whitebeard is so impressed with the fact you travel all over the world <3 wow, you must be so worldly! 

Sabo 

Rich boy who I don’t think would directly get merchandise of you, but he would totally buy things that have your signature color or remind him of you. Very subtle things. I could see him buying one expensive figure of you, but otherwise it’s just subtle things he will proudly wear in public. 

Doesn’t have much time for gaming, so I don’t think he would be playing the mobile gacha games but he will admire the artwork and units of you. 

This is actually a partial truth, he had them at one point but was sinking so much money into your units that Koala had to step in and get him to stop this addiction. 

He’s been doing his best okay… but your alt unit is so tempting he wants to GET IT HE NEEDS TO GET IT LET HIM ROLL ONE MORE ONE MORE ONE MORE- 

Sabo’s phone is now under parental controls and he needs Koala or Dragon’s permission to download or buy any in-app purchases. 

But he’s like, so normal about this, okay? He doesn’t have a problem.

Likes to eat your favorite snacks or food on your birthday as a sort of ‘celebration’ of you. Again, pretty subtle things like buying a dessert you like from that one bakery, or ordering a meal that you ate one time on the show. 

On second thought I could see him having special editions of the manga, but that remains in his office never to be borrowed by anyone. 

Law 

“Why the hell would I be into this?” 

Acts like he’s above watching cringe animes when he’s got better taste in his consumption of media like House MD or Scrubs or something. 

But you know, he’s always getting dragged into silly shit with his friends so everyone is forcing him to watch this popular anime with over 1000+ episodes. 

Law feels like performing surgery on himself with no anesthesia at the sheer number of episodes. 

It isn’t until like 400 episodes in when you’re introduced and everyone swears they can see the light in his eyes return and he’s entranced. 

Suddenly this is his favorite show, although he refuses to entertain that. 

He totally has a few figures of you, but when asked, he just yells that they’re Bepo’s and he’s keeping them safe. 

The others know he’s not going to buy merch so they just buy him silly trinkets of you and he tries to keep lowkey and hidden so no one knows about his love for you. 

He’s not the same man he was 400 episodes ago. He still can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad one. 

But you’ve invaded and latched yourself into his mind and damn it, he’ll keep you there. 

Shanks 

Cringe but free. 

Buggy got him into this show (Buggy made a slip up once and has tried to deny that he’s liked this series since) and Shanks casually watches a few episodes when he’s free. 

Has a couple of figures that a kid Uta always wants to play with (hell no, put that shit back!!!) 

Lies to Uta whenever she asks who this figure is of and he dramatically will hold the figure of you and tell her this is, in fact, who her other parent is. 

Great job, Shanks, you weirdo. Of course, Uta knows when she’s older that he’s lying out of his ass, but when she was younger she was deadset on meeting you. 

So Shanks was forced to include her in his watches so she can see her ‘other parent’. Shanks makes wild stories when Uta asks why you’re in the TV and says you’re so so cool they just had to make a tv show about you. 

He’s the kind of guy who forgets Uta is a kid and whenever something super violent or adult happens, he goes ‘oops’ after a few seconds and shoddily covers her eyes, to the point she can pretty much still see everything. 

So both of them kinda get in a feedback loop where when he gets something, she wants it, and when she wants to do something, he’ll do it when it comes to you. 

You are a staple in that household. Shanks isn’t the best at maintaining your figures but he does remember to dust you off once in a while (mostly after Uta screams at him to keep it in good condition). 

He’s tried to get into the card game (Uta insisted), but he finds the rules too hard and difficult, so him and Uta made an easier version (which he often lies about to be able to win). 

His luck is crappy too when it comes to the blind packs, so when Uta got the rare card of you he was practically gonna wrestle it out of her. 

He’s also weird and rich enough to get any crazy or out there merchandise of you if he felt like it.

[can-ya-guess-my-curent-obsession]

Could you pretty please write 2D with a super clingy s/o? If you do, thank you !!!

2D with an extremely clingy GN!S/O

Authors note: Of course I can write this for you anon :). Thank you for requesting and have a lovely day!

[Extra note: Sorry it kinda feels a bit short but I my brain can't come up with much else with out getting too far from the actual request.

Also my favorite Gif of 2d]

Requests: closed

Edited: Nopes

Pairing: 2D x GN!reader

Phase: unspesified

You two are just two peas in a pod ain't ya

like seriously, you to are perfect

I mean this dude's middle name is clingy

He just wants to be around you constantly

And apparently so do you

Though admittedly

2D's clinginess does have some limits and exceptions that might interfered with your clinginess

Like as much as he likes cuddling, he isn't the type to want to be pressed up against you constantly

So if that's your kinda clingy than there's gonna need to be some boundaries set

Cuz at first Stu enjoys the long form contact but as the day goes on and he gets more sweaty and he becomes more aware of the sensations on his skin it can cause sensory over load for him and he might start bugging out

But that's only if you're shoved up right next to each other

Like he has no issue with prolonged extensive contact in the right setting, like cuddling in bed all day or layzing around on the couch with each other

He can do that it's all about the environment

but like he could hold your hand for like 3 hours straight, cuz that kinda more casual touch is his jam

Also, sorry, but he doesn't check his phone

So like if your long distance for long time and you need to get your fix of 2D loving than good luck contacting him, the guy hardly goes on his phone, and when he does it's probably to play and mobile game when in the car

I don't see Stu putting notifications on either cuz he thinks there obnoxious, and he doesn't know how to silence individual apps

So you could be spamming him, and he'll just be sitting around probably playing video games or watching a zombie movie

The only time he notices is when he goes to check the time on his phone, and he just sees a wall of notifications from his S/O

<Hey Stu I missed you, how's tour been going?

<Stu?

<Hello? Stuart

<2D?

<Stuart please answer me, I miss yooooouuuuuu!

<Baby pleassseeeee-

<...

<Stuart Pot pick up the damn phone please

_Click here to see other 20+ messages from 'Love♡'_

Stuart stared at his phone for a moment before, texting back-

<hi

2D's texts are very lack luster :/

I dunno but he probably uses Facebook to video call you

Because I honestly think he doesn't like voice calls, he likes to see a person's face as he talks to them, or at least his S/O's face

But when you call you call for hours, like it's insane.

Stuart really doesn't mind if you're clingy in front of the band, public, or hell, even in an interview, if you're on one

He doesn't care about what others think about your relationship

Or about how people perceive the fact that you're clingy to him

If asked about it, he's honestly kinda confused

He unabashedly participates in PDA with his partner if they're comfortable

I don't think he would care if you sat in his lap or he sat in your in public

He lacks the ability to read the room, so you could be as clingy as you wanted in public because he isn't able to pick up on the fact that it might bother other people

"What do you mean, annoying? It doesn't bother me at all."

"Inappropriate? How?"

"S/O, is it true that normal couples don't do this?"

The only people he may be a bit more aware around are his parents

But of course, there are moments where 2D needs some space

Like right before live performances, I could see 2D wanting to be alone for a bit to prepare himself before getting a kiss from his S/O before he goes onto stage

Or during his worse migraines he definitely needs to be alone

During the lighter ones, he has little problem with you being around. In fact, he'll probably cling to you

But when it's real bad, people usually tend to make it worse

And 2D might start getting agitated and maybe a bit agressive due to the pain he's in

"Of course we can hold hands luv"

[rad-roche]

i love fucking around with my software and streaming services to make the experience better (i use mobile youtube through newpipe, etc) and i run spicetify to make spotify an actually workable piece of equipment but the out of the box, bog-standard, unaltered app is so monumentally dogshit that every problem i've ever had has never been through spicetify. that's fine. that works great. it's the normal desktop app. which means i can't alter stuff to make it better. 4D chess to stop me altering files by making the normal one unusuable another masterful gambit sir

[wihellib]

WHB, Nightmare Passes, and Value

This is going to be a long post.

It would cost me $72.94 real life dollars if I wanted to possess Beel Bath. For that price I would get:

Solomon Seals: 300 (6 pulls)

Lesser (Red) Keys: 210 (7 ten pulls)

Greater (Gold) Keys: 250 (5 ten pulls)

Solomon’s Tears: 168 (Enough to Promote one character 4/4 times and another 3/4 times)

Pie Piece Choice Chest: 40 (Not enough to upgrade one character’s skill to level 5, which needs 60 pie pieces)

Pie Choice Chest: 50 (Not enough to upgrade one character’s skill to level 8, which needs 160 pies)

Devil Gummy Choice Chest: 10 (Easy to farm, so useless)

Beel Homescreen Buttons: 4 (My Devils, Text Messages, Secret Club, Dark Sanctuary)

Beel Bath Artifact: 2

Beel Bath Card: 1

*These numbers don’t include the free tier that anyone can get.

Now, if you want people to spend an amount of money on your game that’s comparable to the full price of a AAA game (good for many, many hours of fun) then you have to make it worth their while.

This is what I would change to the Nightmare Pass to improve its value:

The Items

Give 500 Solomon Seals (1 ten pull), since 6 pulls is such an odd number. Greater Keys have much less value than Lesser Keys, so, to compensate, it should be 300 Lesser Keys (10 ten pulls) and 100 Greater Keys (2 ten pulls).

They already give a good number of Solomon Seals, so it can be kept like that.

The entire pies system needs to be reworked. It’s absurd how much it costs to upgrade character skills, especially when we have no way of farming pies. So, I’m just going to ignore this part, and just say ‘Do Better’.

The Gummies have extremely low value since it’s so easy for us to farm them, so the Gummy Chests needs to be removed from the Pass and replaced with something else. There are a lot of options, like nightmare pancakes, or advanced candy choice chests, etc.

In regards to the Homescreen buttons, I think that’s a great, unique way to add value to the Pass. However, this is only the case when they are unique buttons. For this Pass, the buttons you get are just of normal Beel, they are not his Bath versions. The problem is you can get all other normal King versions in the Nightmare Pancake shop. This is not fair. Full stop. It punishes Beel fans for no reason. So, the Pass should give unique versions of the buttons instead, and normal Beel buttons should be in the nightmare pancake shop.

You should also get a unique frame.

The L Card

Now, onto the star of the show, the L card. You have to do something to set these cards apart from the others. Give me a reason to spend money on this card when I can get the others for free.

The easiest thing to do is to always make the cards explicit. The full cock and balls and oh look there’s a butthole. Make them obscene. This obviously wouldn’t work for mobile app users, but PrettyBusy should be pushing more and more people over to EroLabs anyways. They need to figure out a way for people to transfer their accounts and then go all in on EroLabs so they don’t have to worry about censorship.

Something that would add huge value to the nightmare passes is if the L card’s story was voiced. Not fully voiced, the side characters wouldn’t be, just the main guy on the card would be voiced. I understand getting voice acting is expensive. But this wouldn’t have to be every card on the pass and when it was, they could increase the price a little bit.

Also the L card should be fully evolved if you buy it. Currently you can only buy the card once and have no way of getting more copies to evolve it. So an easy way to add value to the card is to have it fully evolved (i.e. more powerful).

The Character On The Card

Moving on to which characters should be featured on the nightmare pass. I am adamant that none of the Kings should be on a nightmare pass ever.

The main love interests of WHB are the 7 Demon Kings. The others get a sex scene in the main story and maybe some flirty texts/interactions, but that’s it. I really don’t think any of the main love interests of a game should be completely paywalled.

The nightmare pass works best and is the most fair when it’s a once-in-a-while thing (every 3-4 months) and is used to showcase characters that are not the main love interests, like Gabriel and Juno.

This way also has more potential for making money. It’s like, “Hey, I know how much you love Andrealphus or Minhyeok, and you’re sad you’ll only get one sex scene with them and no fancy art, but what if we told you that you could… if you buy these nightmare passes.” People would jump at that way more than a non-explicit card of Beel that’s very similar to other cards that you can get for free. The nightmare pass is devalued in this case.

Finale

So far PrettyBusy hasn’t said anything about the controversy surrounding the nightmare pass. There is a strong chance that they will ignore it completely. So, please keep the pressure up and keep sending them emails (be professional, not bullies) expressing your displeasure with the current state of WHB.

[asagitori-blog]

Okita-gumi Idol Photocards!

Uuuuuuuurrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh………….I would have gotten this done if it wasn’t for those damn ad viruses.

Seriously, I couldn’t log in or post anything for so long because Tumblr has a problem with its ads constantly triggering my antivirus. WFT TUMBLR

(I had to black out the rest of the URL cuz just in case for safety reasons)

Like, I am normally ok with ads but, IF THE ADS ARE TRYING TO ENDANGER MY PERSONAL SAFETY THEN NO, I AM NOT OK WITH IT!!!!

To try and avoid the problem with the viruses I had to go out and buy extra RAM so I could install Firefox and ad block. However, I chickened out at the last minute when I learned once you install Firefox you can’t uninstall it. I had then planned to download the Tumblr mobile app as a plan B but the reviews on the app are not good…lots of glitches and crashes. So in the end I downloaded a traffic light extension to detect whether the site was safe to go on.

But OMG the amount of cookies this site uses are fucking insane!!!

[solacescastleglow]

How I'm Gamifying Daily Life

Who doesn't love a little whimsy in their life? Nobody, that's who. That's why I'm working on making the most boring things fun, it's a win win situation. I know a lot of people gamify with apps like Finch or Habitica, but that isn't really enough for me. I need something in the real world that will prompt me to start, not just a point system that I can put out of sight and out of mind.

I'm still in the process of enacting these, so the system may change, but I'm having a lot of fun with it and I wanted to write about it in case someone else gets some ideas from it.

XP and reward system

Since I don't play TTRPGs or anything like them, I really have no reason to do this other than I saw it and it seemed fun. But basically I have 'skills' (daily life task categories) that I'm earning points towards, and when I reach certain levels I get myself a little, or big, reward. Rewards are relevant to the topic and go from things like having a bath to things like buying something from a French clothing brand I like. I keep track of it in a notebook, which doesn't seem like it would work but so far it's been fine.

Skills

self care --> Character Maintenance

fitness --> Strength

socialising --> Charisma

going out on my own --> Wayfinding

studying --> Arcane Mastery

writing my book --> Lore Crafting

learning French --> Foreign Tongue

discipline/doing things I don't want to do --> Resolve

problem solving, especially technical --> Tinkering

chores --> Castle Restoration

practicing Judaism --> Divine Alignment

personal finance --> Prosperity

Whenever I hit milestones in these (for example, going somewhere outside the city on my own), I'm going to get myself a little award of some kind. I haven't decided yet if it'll be coin-like tokens, merit badges to put on an item of clothing or a blanket, or stickers to put in a special book. But definitely something like that.

Decisions --> minigames

Decision fatigue is real, and I'm easily tired, so I've made some fun ways to reduce that mental load, while also giving me a little dopamine hit to get me through the execution of the task.

Spinning a wheel in the morning to determine what kind of shower I'm going to have (quick, normal, everything).

Workout dreidels. I've assigned the letters on the dreidels to body parts (core, upper body, legs, full body) and types of workout (mobility, flexibility, strength, balance). I was gonna use D4 dice for this, but I have a bajillion dreidels so yeah.

A dartboard for where I go on my walks to. There are 12 options on 2 rings, the outer ring being free (or almost free) stuff and the inner ring being paid. I'm not very good at darts so it works out.

A dress up game to pick outfits. It's literally so fun and all I had to do was draw all my clothes on separate layers in an art program. It's not super polished or anything but it does the job and saves me having to put all my clothes back in the closet.

My adventure box

My "weekly" (though it hasn't really worked out that way) adventures are things like going rock climbing, birdspotting, or clubbing with my sibling. I put them on slips of paper, and whenever I feel like I need some adventure in my life I draw one out. It then goes on the wall facing the foot of my bed until I've finished it.

My housework sticks

A bonus to having teachers as parents is that they can bring home stuff from their jobs, like, say, a bunch of popsicle sticks that I can write all my housework tasks on and track my Castle Restoration points with. I've outsourced the decision making to my dad, who has more spare time and is a lot more vocal about the house being tidy than my mum, so all I have to do is do the things and get the points.

---

And those are all my ideas so far!! I might update with some more once things have settled in, but I think this is a good start.

[lee-hakhyun]

you guys have probably noticed that i've been less active here. and it's not because i don't want to be here, but that tumblr is NOT WORKING. it takes so long to load that i just end up closing the tab before the website actually starts. like, i just now timed it:

20 seconds just to get on tumblr. it's soo bad here. mind you, this is the only website that has this problem. i don't have bad internet, every other site loads up fine

the mobile app is normal... but i mainly browse tumblr on web.... so. yeah. i'll be more active on bluesky for now (i'm really hoping this is temporary ☹️)

[purple-link]

Stupid muscle memory had me accidentally clicking the new "AI Mode" to the left of "All", where it had always been. Don't remember this bs here yesterday.

Why do they always have to sneak generative ai in like that? Do they think, that by forcing it on people, that they'd grow to like it?

If it actually helped, or was in any way good without taking people's creative jobs, it wouldn't be so unpopular.

Edit: Another fun thing they added recently. You know on mobile they had the "keep using Safari OR launch search in the app" pop up in the google webpage? Well, now they're using it to launch ai from that, if the user wants to.

See, the problem is, i'm impatient, so if the ai button is on the top, and I accidentally click on it, it's because I was moving too fast to double check the options.

Trust me, people these days are even more impulsive. If the option to use ai mode in google is the top option in that little pop up, it's because it's another manipulative strategy to have people using their ai tech instead of normal search, because lord knows we're not using it normally.

[azzydoesstuff]

infinite money glitch:

make shitty mobile game (quality does not matter, its not like we're gonna have players. we just need advertisers to be convinced)

ask advertisers to pay for ads on game

what we don't tell them is that the app actually just plays ads 100% of the time. when one ends another one starts

advertisers are clueless because there are no ads in the game yet so it plays as normal

advertisers pay for ads

app is now a complete ad shitshow whose only purpose is making money off of ads

next, purchase a large amount of phones

their ability to run games does not matter. as long as they can run ads, it works

thus, buy the cheapest, shittiest phones possible

install app on all of the phones

keep app running on phones 24/7

make absolute bank off of all of the ads

use money to buy more phones to install and run the app on

repeat, exponentially increasing income indefinitely

advertisers get trolled and are completely clueless

problem, government?

[chimerafflesia]

went from platinum 1 -> legend 1 on ranked with my odd-eyes venom deck, so I wanted to delve into my findings and how I'm feeling about the deck so far :3

first and foremost per usual here is the deck I've been playing with :D

this deck is so. much. fun. PENDULUMS GO SO FUCKING HARD!!! CUE DANNY DEVITO I GET IT NOW GIF. there's so many moving parts and different combos I can do and it's been such a blast figuring em all out. this deck is soooooo versatile and I can't wait to try more builds as time goes on :')

there are so many stars in this deck but I wanna give one shout out in particular.

odd-eyes vortex dragon you crazy bitch. I LOVE YOU.

when I saw it was limited 1 I was like hmmmm I guess. wonder why. GIRL. I UNDERSTAND WHY. I WANT A MILLION OF THESE BITCHES. OMNI NEGATE BEAST. IT CAN NEGATE FORBIDDEN DROPLET. IT SENDS AN ATTACK POSITION MONSTER BACK TO THE HAND WHEN IT'S SUMMONED. I LOVE IT. 10/10 MONSTER.

speaking of negating, this deck does a LOT of it. I really enjoy going first, because if I can get my full board setup, it can cause SO MUCH interruption. I actually make a lil breakdown (for myself too) of my ideal turn 1 board and how everything works together :)

WELCOME TO NEGATE CITY ‼️ POPULATION: THE OPPONENTS BOARD.

ohhhh it's so much fun. it's so funny. I think my opponents can really feel the venomous affection. I'm just spreading the love 🤭💜❤️

for support, the triple MST is pretty important too, because this deck is pretty weak to backrow. I'm no stranger to it because predaplants are the same. the book of eclipse definitely helps too, especially during battle phases.

I did come across some issues on the ladder, namely the perpetual thorn in my side dragonic contact, but it's not unbeatable. believe it or not, if I can do my full turn 1 board, red dragon archfiend isn't so much of an issue either (thank GOD. -_-) however, I did find realize something funny over the past few days regarding one deck

I didn't realize it when I typed "I went first", but that was the problem!! ancient gears love going second, because their turn 1 boards are weak!!!!! if I see crowler, I am SLAMMING that coin to try and go second. every time I've gone second against ancient gear it's been a breeze.

perhaps my favorite lil trick this deck can do, is the odd-eyes venom INSTA KILL. I don't aim for it because it's really resource intensive to get OEV out, but when I can pull it off GOD IS IT FUNNY. IT'S REALLY REALLY FUNNY.

^ FOOTAGE OF ME ON THE RANKED LADDER. WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO KILL THIS GUY YUYA.

there is a bit of a rush in seeing this and knowing you can swing for game. go my toxic yaoi dragon. KILL!!!

I want to link a few replays (they'll only open on the duel links mobile app fsr) that showcase a lil bit of everything. the plays aren't perfect because I am still learning the ins and out of my deck but they're still pretty good :3

https://duellinks.konami.net/att/0526e5a18143aeb9dbf02a955cae9a11510105b9b4 - VS anna kaboom, ends in OEV direct atk

https://duellinks.konami.net/att/04fd480e09f3e65668020821e599a3d73dbf4146ca - VS red dragon archfiend, OEV direct atk

https://duellinks.konami.net/att/019e0495379b714fea97a8b9ea62fd47252b0e2e44 - VS dragonic contact

https://duellinks.konami.net/att/0640177a937486807ee5c8dbe6d817dddadc5d0427 - VS ancient gear

https://duellinks.konami.net/att/06a0eba17bf337511f5d47cdb8372a26967f5bd515 - VS anna kaboom, really good showcase of all the negates

think that's all for now :) I do think going into legend this deck will need some more tweaking, but I'm excited for it 🙂‍↕️ 25 meta guys vs one fujo is going just as planned. I WILL prevail because I said so ‼️ and when I KOG with a skill named odd-eyes venomous affection I promise I am going to be so annoying normal about it 😋👍

[next-crisis]

'Scuse me while I faceplant in frustration.

I just spoke with a very nice young man at my ISP. On April 29th I reported to said ISP that my internet connection was down. They arranged for an engineer to visit on the morning of May 1st. He did; he tested the two phoneline sockets most in use in my apartment (the single one I do keep in use, and the one in an awkward little wall cupboard where the line first enters my home), determined there was a fault outside said home, and, leaving a device plugged in here, went off to the local exchange to do some testing there and fix the fault he had found beyond my boundaries. He came back and told me it was sorted, and that my fibreoptic connection should take 24 hours to settle back to normal. I reset the router, as their website told me to do, and waited.

As of 19.00 on May 3rd, the hub containing my router is still not showing the correct colour of light, nor is it connecting to the internet, regardless of anything I do (based on their instructions) to fix it. I can't even get into the admin panel. So I texted them back to confirm that the fault had not been resolved.

The aforementioned nice young man phoned me, and the upshot of our conversation was that my hub is probably a secondary problem in all this, since it's refusing to finish its standard rebooting process, for whatever reason.

He has had a new Hub sent to me, but since it was after 7pm on Saturday, and Monday is a bank holiday, I probably won't receive it till Tuesday at the earliest. In the meantime, I'm stuck with limited mobile data.

Tumblr, at least, only seems to need to connect to the net for posting when preloading tags and on hitting "post". Unfortunately, most of my other regular apps and sites, such as Ancestry, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and some of the games I play, only want to load pages below a certain size on mobile data. (AO3 does load things, but chapter by chapter, which is a way I'm not fond of reading with fanfic, tbqh.)

So anything that's, for example, the size of the 1921 census document I've been working to transcribe, will be out for the next couple of days. It's been a pain all week, but it continues to be.

Perhaps it'll be time to concentrate on some of my offline stuff, like home physio and cataloguing my CD collection. But I have stuff I've agreed to do for other people, and I need the internet for that.

Excuse my faceplanting again.

A few years ago I didn't so much mind being minus home internet - when my sis and I lived in Somerset we had to go to the local library to get online! We didn't have phones that could do much of anything on the internet, not 15 years ago. They were beyond both our financial ability. Feels strange that things change so rapidly over such a comparatively short time...

[mariacallous]

On the final evening of a trip to China this summer, I went out to dinner with friends at a shopping mall in central Shanghai and had my eyes opened by something unexpected.

Shopping malls have been the rage in China for decades, never falling out of fashion as some would say they did long ago in the country that invented them, the United States. Although a definitive count is hard to come by, in Shanghai alone, China’s largest city and one of its richest, there are said to be hundreds of malls, and I’ve been visiting them frequently since the early 2000s, when I lived in the city.

This might make malls an unlikely backdrop for an insight into ongoing social currents in the country, but that’s exactly what my dinner experience delivered to me on this night. First of all was the location. When I received the invitation, I immediately recognized the address, Middle Huaihai Road, in the city’s elegant former French Concession. And as I approached the place in a car hailed using an Uber-like app, I remembered the neighborhood as having once been home to one of the city’s biggest and most famous fake-goods markets. For decades, this was where airline crews and foreign visitors flocked to purchase knockoffs of Western luxury brands at rock-bottom prices, as well as pirated copies of DVDs of the latest Hollywood releases, among other goods.

Upon approach, the mall announced just how much China—and the world—has changed in the last 10 years, through the gigantic, illuminated lettering of its anchor business: an enormous Prada store, replete with the ritzy and distinctive architecture that normally goes with such things. Other pricey brand stores included Gucci, Miu Miu, and Dolce & Gabbana.

Even before I stepped inside, I knew that I was in for a special experience. Neatly dressed valets and doormen greeted arriving customers pointing them, a bit superfluously, toward the automatic doorways, where even from the outside, the welcome blast of air conditioning could be felt in the warm and thickly humid night.

I have long been aware that Chinese shopping malls, like malls in other countries, exist on a spectrum, from low to high end, and I had been to other high-end malls in China before, including in other cities, from Beijing to Chengdu and Xi’an. The celebration of luxury on display at the IAPM Mall struck me as a whole new level, though, and this went well beyond its collection of commercial tenants. What impressed me more that evening was the clientele. No small number of the people sauntering through its white decor looked like customers in a Paris or Milan fashion show, and, often enough, like the models themselves, complete with looks of haughty self-contentment and practiced ennui.

One of the most prevalent storylines about China in the wake of COVID-19 has been the dearth of consumer demand. This was clearly not the problem, though, for the occupants of the small world that I encountered that evening. There have been related storylines about weak investment data, both from Chinese and foreign sources, as well as an even longer-running topic, an ongoing crisis over overcapacity in the housing market.

I am admittedly limited to appearances, but on this one Friday night the people in this one mall didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Not only were they dressed to kill, but they were filling the many shops and restaurants, where they were eating fancy meals and, yes, spending money and buying things. My visits to more ordinary malls on this trip and other recent visits have revealed very different behaviors to me. The foot traffic in them appears reasonably healthy, even busy, but the stores, from jewelry shops and mobile phone dealers to clothing boutiques, have most often been empty, or close to it, and the food consumption on display heavily favored low-end restaurants and fast food.

The point that I have been working my way toward is that more than ever before, this trip left me with the impression of China as a deeply and increasingly bifurcated society, one in which inequality is high and seems to be growing, where people are living in increasingly separate worlds.

As I noted in my last column, which also drew from this trip, large numbers of Chinese people have recently been seeking ways to exit their society, pessimistically voting with their feet, in effect, about their country’s prospects after a long period of world-beating and transformational economic growth. The question is whether this matters to the country’s leadership, or better put: At what point would an exodus of people be deemed a crisis or emergency?

There is an argument to be made that the flight of many thousands of people who are struggling in China’s current economic environment actually benefits the state, by serving as a form of social release or, in other words, an escape valve. People from the countryside, from third-tier cities in the country’s interior, members of the working and lower-middle classes enjoy little political influence in today’s China. What the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state pay much closer attention to are the sentiments and behaviors of the more prosperous elements of the society that are concentrated in the giant and relatively rich cities of the country’s east.

If religion, for Karl Marx, was famously called the opium of the masses, then material comfort; dernier cri fashion; access to the most prestigious brands; and lifestyle enhancements, like the endless fancy dining choices on display in the mall I visited, from the sumptuous and elegant Singapore soup dumpling restaurant where we ate to the embarrassment of choices of specialty dessert places (I chose chocolates from an expensive Italian-named place), would seem to be the pacifiers of China’s upper-middle classes.

By the standards of Americans with decent professional incomes, the cost of living in China’s most affluent cities often seems quite reasonable. Foreign luxury goods may be expensive (and heavily taxed), but restaurants, clothes, transportation, and many services are downright cheap. If this is true for an American, it is also true for an affluent Chinese person, like those in evidence on this Friday night.

For me, this helps make sense of a lot of what is going on in China today. Scholars have long explained the post-Tiananmen Square social contract in these terms: Stay out of politics, the sole preserve of the CCP, and focus on that era’s newly sanctified secular goal, getting rich.

Becoming affluent has become much more difficult in recent years, with the Chinese economy’s gradual but steady slowdown, with a trend toward rapid aging well underway, and with the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and its sluggish aftermath. Brought up to date, a newer disposition might go something like this: If you’re rich, good for you; enjoy, indulge, and don’t make waves. If you’re not, though, well, you’re largely on your own.

When one looks at the rest of the Chinese population—meaning the hundreds of millions who don’t live in the most prosperous eastern cities, don’t rank above the middle class, or worse, live in the countryside—the material comforts and purchasing-power advantages enjoyed by urban elites are shrinking or nonexistent. For many rural Chinese, the most economically vulnerable portion of the population, in fact, state pensions only provide about $25 a month for many retirees.

Understood in this way, my night out at the mall may have offered me the most distorting mirror imaginable about the actual state of China and its economy. Not only are people seeking to leave via emigration, but Chinese also seem to be expressing their feelings and confidence about the future in another, even more telling way: their decisions about when or whether to get married and have children.

Narratives about falling fertility rates have become commonplace around the world in recent years, but that only obscures the drama of what is happening around decisions like these in China. As the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt has pointed out, since 2013, the year that Xi Jinping became the country’s leader, the number of first marriages in the country has fallen by more than half. There were only half as many births in 2022 as just six years earlier, meanwhile, and these numbers are still falling. Not even the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s Great Famine, or the genocide in Cambodia managed to cut the fertility rate, or average number of births per woman, by as large a percentage as China has seen during these years.

Almost all well-regarded demographers agree that China’s population is going to shrink dramatically over the coming decades. This, of course, doesn’t mean that the country is going to disappear. No society facing declining fertility has figured out how to reverse this trend. To even slow it down, though, China will have to revise its social compact yet again, doing much more to provide opportunity, affordability, and economic security not for the fancy mall shoppers, but for everyone else.

[titles-for-tangents]

Hey is anyone else’s tumblr mobile app crashing a lot or is it just me?

It wasn’t happening at all on Monday and was running normally, but ever since yesterday it’s been a total crapshoot guess how long I can keep the app open for before it crashes again. Sometimes it’s instantaneous, and I’m not sure if it’s a problem with loading new info too fast or if tumblr itself is just getting an update.

[dnp-described]

thanks for making this blog!

a question, since i've seen conflicting info: does tumblr's native alt text feature work with your screenreader? is it better to use the native feature or add alt text after?

I've only ever used the built in screenreader on my iphone, but it does read out tumblr alt text in the app and in a mobile browser. a screenreader definitely should read out the alt text for images, that's like, the main point of alt text, and it's not exactly hard to implement alt text properly, it's just an html tag (granted I'm not sure how it works in mobile apps). It may be that people have had problems in the past or on other platforms (the type of screenreader shouldn't really matter, I don't think, unless all alt text was broken on that screenreader, but software can be weird) so if anyone has had problems or is currently having them please feel free to correct me! I really am not very good at using a screenreader lol. There are so many hand gestures and I usually use it when my light sensitivity is really bad and I'm generally feeling like shit so it's pretty rare for me to be like, browsing using a screenreader, usually it's more of an "opening some apps to switch what I'm listening to" situation.

Whether alt text or an image ID in normal text after the image is better is something different people disagree on a lot, if you want to be extra accessible the best option is to have both. Personally I put mine in just the alt text because it's less to scroll past/listen to twice/skip if it's on a screenreader (which I know is kind of a dumb reason) but really either one is a solid option and a lot better than nothing.

edit because i forgot: if you're putting the image description below a cut or something it's definitely better to include alt text so ppl don't have to navigate away to get the context and also, if anything ever happens to your blog or you delete the post, the image description is then lost