So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

Saw a sharp increase in my follower count after posting this. The legitimacy of it is driving me nuts so I also feel the need to say that you can follow anyone on here regardless of whether you’ve interacted with them or not. People like the above mentioned blog are exceptions. Perhaps they themselves think they aren’t and therefore will act like they aren’t, but they are, trust me.

Just follow anyone you wanna follow. The worst thing that can happen is maybe getting soft-blocked by the other person, but if they do soft-block you, then they were never that worth following in the first place.

wow. really hope this isn't actually a norm taking hold with new users! this isn't facebook, you don't need to know people before following them

You DO need to post something on your own blog first, though. Otherwise, people you try to follow will think you're a bot & block you.

If your blog looks like this, you look like a bot:

Just post something. Anything. PLEASE. Even if it's a simple text post saying "I SWEAR I'M NOT A BOT 😅"

You don't want to get mistaken for a bot! Most follow-bots don't do anything but lurk (not sure what the point of them is tbh), but I've heard some will wait a couple weeks & then spam all their followed pages' inboxes with porn. So I block them & report as spam. 🤷‍♀️

FYI, I also block-and-report all strangers DM'ing me to ask for money. Stop that. It's rude & you look like a spam bot.

if you like crafting and also free things, might i suggest the antique pattern library?

it’s a not for profit that’s gathering books, patterns, and other materials related to crafting that are out of copyright (or getting permission from copyright holders in some cases) in order to share them online. they scan items, clean them up, then make everything available for free!

free things are great, especially when you’re just starting to get into something. like oh, i’m supposed to spend money on this hobby i just picked up 20 minutes ago???

the first time i ended up on the site, i seriously spent hours just trawling through everything. there’s the usual suspects like knitting, crochet, embroidery, but there’s also woodwork, calligraphy, and books on things like how to mount and frame pictures. with cross stitch patterns, they also make modern charts with the dmc colour codes available.

links to their webbed site and instagram:

https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/

https://www.instagram.com/theantiquepatternlibrary/

behold, a glorious cat cross stitch pattern (link goes to antique pattern library page):

[image id: Multicolour charted cross stitch design of a cat sitting on a red pillow with tassels, holding a green ball]

In 2024, scientists discovered seven new species of frogs in Madagascar. Because the whistling sounds these species made resembled the sounds of communicators from the Star Trek universe, it was decided to name the species after the seven legendary captains: Boophis kirki, Boophis picardi, Boophis siskoi, Boophis janewayae, Boophis archeri, Boophis pikei, and Boophis burnhamae. [Source]

So, meet the Boophis kirki I needle-felted for this year's Winter Fandom Kombat! ✨

Link to the original post on AO3

How has no one tagged the frog guy? @markscherz

AHHHHHH THIS IS THE BEST THING!!!! Thank you @eldar-of-zemlya!

YOU GUYS

BOOPHIS KIRKI WILL NOW LIVE IN MY OFFICE FOREVERRR!!

Thank you SOOO much, @eldar-of-zemlya!!

Just a reminded to all the Aussies now that the Federal Election has been announced: YOU CAN NOT WASTE YOUR VOTE!

We have preferential voting which means unless you do like a donkey vote, you cannot waste it. Putting a third party or independent over one of the two parties will not increase or decrease the chances of that party winning. It will tell the government what you value, and also means more chance of a minority government.

(Also to all non-Aussie’s if you see us taking about the Liberal Party, they are our centre-right party. The Labour Party is our centre-left party)

HEY, FELLOW HATERS OF INSANELY-BRIGHT CAR HEADLIGHTS, SOMEONE HAS STARTED A PETITION TO REGULATE THEM.

It's an official petition through the Australian Government's e-petition page, which means if it gets enough signatures, it will be tabled in government.

You do have to be an Australian citizen to sign it, BUT!!! PLEASE REBLOG THIS EVEN IF YOURE NOT, because these kind of things have a roll-on effect, and if Australia legislates LED headlights, then other countries may follow.

FYI, the petition asks only for your name and email, and once you've clicked the sign button, they'll send you an email to confirm your signature --- you need to click the confirmation link in the email to have your signature counted.

Unironically, vegans need to be advocating for more and better sheep, llama, and alpaca farms. Wool is one of the best fabrics we have in terms of versatility, longevity and most importantly, insulation. Even wet, it retains 80% of it’s insulation potential.

AND IT DOESN’T SHED MICROPLASTICS

Like, there’s literally nothing you can do to a sheep that’s as morally reprehensible as dumping plastic down the gullet of literally every other living thing. You wanna talk about animal welfare? Talk about reducing the amount of microplastics produced by rayon, polyester, and spandex.

Bruh plant-based sources of clothing exist and are better for the environment and don’t involve slicing an animal’s throat open please shut the fuck up you cunt

THE WOOL GROWS BACK

Do they think you kill a sheep for it’s wool

A LOT OF THEM DO THINK THIS. They get told this carp by PETA and the like.

People- wool animals are not killed for their wool/hair. Yaks, angora rabbits, angora goats, sheep, alpacas, llamas etc… We SHEAR THEM. Not Flay. Shear. With clippers.

Or some people just gather what falls off the critter, or in the case of “chien” which is dog fluff, you brush that off them.

Healthy happy animals make good fiber. It is monetarily foolish and useless to abuse your animals because then their fiber is bad. You can debate points of husbandry and some parts of industries need change so fight about that.

But wool is amazing.

If sheep are stressed (like living in the wild without humans because they are domestic animals) the fiber breaks and the fleece is worthless for spinning. Along with that domestic sheep need to be sheared once a year (sometimes more) or their wool matts and causes issues.

I saw someone once worrying about the sheep getting cut by the shears, and that can be worrying, but the little nicks are basically shaving nicks where skin gets caught. Hurts for a moment then it’s ok. Watch some sheep shearing content most shearers do their absolute best to make it as quick and stressless as possible.

Due to the domestication of animals like sheep it’s impossible for humans to simply cut contact and leave the animals to the wild. Typically domestication is a long and complex process, no one just saw a wolf and said mine now. It was probably more like a wolf pack hangs around a campground because they smell meat. A human tosses some meat to one and over generation the friendly wolfs bread and get closer and closer to the people. Friendliness is an advantage, if the wolf doesn’t bite it gets food. Sheep were first probably kept for milk, and meat, then as technologies expanded and spinning was invented and their wool was used.

I think a lot of people forget that though the history of humans we exist in a time that is so brief and different then what our ancestors experienced that somethings require recerching and learning to figure out. If the only article on domestication you’ve read is the foxes in Russia that will give you a very differnt view point then articles on how mice and cats domesticated themselves. All people did was live in the area.

Something I think everyone needs a reminder on every now and then is we are all animals, sure people have amazing infrastructure now but in the past pre permanent settlements. It was do what you can to survive.

Oh that's a tumbler or roller pigeon! They're bred to do this! It's believed that the original inclination to tumble in the air was a tactic to avoid being caught by flying predators, then this inclination was bred in favor of doing it more. Some breeds can also fly normally for hours as well, and the most sound breeds are those that can make safe landings still. There's whole shows and competitions around tumbler pigeons!

There's more unsound breeds of course as well, but this one clearly has good control of its flight and landing. Well done pigeon!

tumblr pigeon 🤨

The bird version of figure skating?

Today's action item:

Call Cory Booker's office and say thank you. If you're not one of his direct constituents, say so and indicate you're calling to show he has national support. Aides and pages are allowed to speak with him and other Senators may receive messages they can pass on via questions, meaning he will find out at some point in proceedings.

Also, you can watch direct from his website:

The NPR article is so so good, just FYI.

He beat the record by the way! So suck it Thurmond and Cruz!

And he's not doing bs tactics either.

Unlike other politicians like Ted Cruz in 2013

At 25 hours and one minute, with basically no voice left, Cory Booker has ceded the floor.

The longest speech in the history of Congress is now one in defense of democracy, checks and balances, and protection for lower-class Americans.

We finally found one, guys, it's a Democrat with a fucking BACKBONE.

:)

I thought for a second that Seaglass somehow persuaded Jasper & Amethyst to prank Steven 😂

Do not obey in advance.

Keep hating It's working

Okay but reblogging specifically for "Tesla in Distressla" because whoever came up with that tagine deserves a moment of recognition.

Haha remember when Elon posted this for April Fools that one time? Hilarious, right? Be funny if everybody joined in on the joke this year!

Pokemon Crochet Pattern Masterlist

Never thought I'd finish this but I finally tracked down a crochet pattern for EVERY Pokemon*. Gonna say that 85% of them are in English but there's a few I could only find in other languages (should still be understandable for the most part), ~30% of them also have videos, a majority have images but a handful are text only... Give me another day and I'll put together another post with more stats lol

You can find the list in this spreadsheet, with links to at least one pattern for every Pokemon, videos if applicable, names/websites of their designers.

*Up to date as of 4/1/2025 with at least one entry for each Pokemon, but not every single alternate/variant

lets settle this properly

"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

Bro, blocking someone and then using their tag like this is, all offence, weak as fuck. Like all you had to say was, na bro I don't promote pedo protags on this here blog, because I wholly agree with the premise of your argument given contexts (i.e., writing abusive relationships to show the evils, great; writing abusive relationships to show the romance, yikes).

This response is so, so comically shitty within the context of that tag, oh my god.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

and

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

If you hold these viewpoints you are holding authoritarian viewpoints.

DUDE IT’S PEDO FICS EVERYBODY THINKS THEY’RE NASTY

Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.

If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.

This is not about defending bad people this is about defending the freedom of good people from tyranny, you moron.

I think if you take it to its logical extreme. Say, banning people from writing stories of sexual abuse. That could then be said "well ANY talk about sexual abuse is bad."

And from that, you could ban books that talk about it irl. Or books like how to recover after being abuse. If its not something to be discussed AT ALL.

The fact that I’ve seen this post in some form on my dash like 100x and each time there’s new idiots who do not get that you can’t have *some* censorship.

Either you’re for it or you aren’t.

The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.

Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?

When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.

Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?

When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.

Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.

Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.

Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??

The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.

The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.

This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.

Protecting freedom of expression is essential, and if you do not get that, I don’t know what to say to you.

And the people who keep bringing up child sex abuse as a reason for censorship are doing it very specifically because everyone feels like then they HAVE to agree with the person in favor of censorship.

It’s not that there isn’t widespread societal agreement on this. It’s that they want you backed into a rhetorical corner where you feel compelled to agree with them.

Also, like, we KNOW how this shit shakes out in fandom because it's happened before.

In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."

Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".

Censorship is authoritarian and it will ALWAYS have more collateral damage than you can imagine.

Going to add that fiction which had sexual abuse and communities which played around with it as a writing topic are the very things that protected me from irl sexual abuse when I was a teenager. I was in a dicey situation, and realized that while my situation did not match up to any of the superficial or textbook cases mentioned in passing (if at all) through school, it matched up a LOT to what I'd learned about irl sexual abuse through works of fiction and the rhetoric of my communities. I got out of that situation and dodged what was, in retrospect, one hell of a nasty bullet. If it hadn't been for that "nasty" fiction and those "nasty" communities, I would very likely have been abused, and subject to further violence spiraling out from that abuse.

you can’t have *some* censorship.

Censorship is authoritarian.