“We dropped different numbers of balls at different rates, different heights. We had a ramp. The ramps were at different angles, trying to get the most out of the balls as they hit the actors. After doing the tests, we figured out 35 feet above the deck of the ship was the height we needed our nets. We had these three big nets that held almost 80,000 per net. The balls dropped 35 feet into ramps that projected them towards the stunt guys. It just knocked them over. It was pretty spectacular.”

-Mark Hawker, SFX Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean

“It’s amazing to see a bunch of 40 and 50-year-olds turn into three-year-olds all of a sudden. Everybody had to pick up blue balls, hit the other guy in the head. It was like, ’Is it time for the parents to come pick up the kids?’”

-George Marshall Ruge, Stunt Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean

#what a cool way to film waves crashing over a boat!!!

Shame on me for not clarifying from the beginning, but this set up was not meant to simulate water. This was to help the SFX team animate the part where the sea goddess, Calypso, turns giant in visual call-back to ancient Greek pottery, and then escapes her human body by exploding into a quarter million crabs.

On Pirates 1-3 if they wanted a big wave to go over the boat, they just straight up dumped giant bucket-tanks of water over the actors (they did this to Kevin McNally and Orlando Bloom in the first movie) or blasted the hull of the ship with water cannons ❤

(Some of the white is smoke from the debris mortars firing too)

@mochitoaster

Whenever someone complains about the $80 USD sticker price on new games, some folks like to bring up the fact that many Super Nintendo cartridges were retailing for the same price way back in the 90s.

The subtext of these observations is usually that AAA game prices have been effectively static for thirty years, so really, once you take inflation into account, AAA games are cheaper than ever.

A more pointed observation would be that, in spite of those thirty years of inflation, that $80 price tag has managed to become less affordable to the average gamer in 2025 than it was in 1995, which is an indictment that reaches much further than the AAA gaming industry.

Hey, y’know that crazy-ass video that was recently making the rounds. yeah. that one. You know the one. Turns out it’s not the whole thing.

So I have some questions.

Luigi Mangione could be getting the death penalty…

This man is innocent, his appearance and build doesn’t match that of the killers, the only “motive” he had was a convenient written confession showing that he supposedly viewed healthcare companies as “parasitic” and too expensive (which does somewhat contradict the actual killers actions) he had said note and the murder weapon conveniently on him while living his ordinary life, the killer held the gun in his right hand while Luigi is left-handed, Luigi and the Killer were potentially seen simultaneously, they wore slightly different coats.

The NYPD KNOW these are different people, they know the evidence is lacking, this isn’t a mistaken identity, it’s framing, they are trying to make themself appear to still be control by catching this man, humiliating him, killing him, when they know full well that the person they are prosecuting ISNT EVEN THE RIGHT GUY! This is an injustice! This is not a fair trial! This is downright tyranny!

They confiscated his bag at the mcdonald's, took it out of everyone's sight, unpacked it and repacked it, and THEN took it down to the station and wow there was a manifesto in there that he was just carrying around in daily life for some reason

Definitely the sort of thing that the Bag Of Monopoly Money Guy would be carrying to McDonald's

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

:C

I’m so fucking sick of AI

You're right actually, this was his reaction to the concept of ai art

@stvksn on ig

I hope your god has asked for your mercy. I hope youve refused to forgive him.

i love this more and more every time i see it.

I have so much love for this person. The amount of empathy it takes to have these considerations about a person you will never meet, the eloquence and conviction with which they speak, the contempt for landlords. Sometimes I see something someone writes or creates and I wish with everything in me that I could meet and talk to that person for hours about what caused them to be this kind of light in the universe. This is one of those times.

Does anyone else feel like the world was so much simpler and more hopefull during coincidentally the exact same span of time when my entire world view was based on children's movies?

It just really feels like it all started going downhill purely coincidentally when I started becoming more fully aware of things like inequality and global conflicts.

If only we could recapture the civility and optimism of The Yugoslav Wars and Rwandan genocide. Before the rise of the alt right made everything (like trans rights) so divisive. If only we could all be as safe and accepted as Chanelle Pickett.

pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them

#here is a man so heartless he has literally cut his own heart out of his chest #but he's still not as evil as the fucking east india trading company

what if vampires are like mosquitoes and only the ladies drink blood

Pretty sure that would mean the fellas drink tree sap or something. Imagine running from a vampire thru the woods and passing her husband who’s biting a tree real hard

Maple syrup vampire husband

Encounter: Maple syrup vampire husband drinking sap in the woods, also trying to lure you to his literally bloodthirsty wife.

The wife has the classic Villain Of The Night aesthetic, all black, flowing cape, everything, and her husband is wearing red flannel, overalls, a beard, and is welding a log-splitting axe

This person gets it! Classic vampire lady and her lumberjack husband!

I regret nothing

lol

hold on gotta look somehing up

[[ Transmission of image ]]

Three pictures are displayed. The first is a picture with a Magic the Gathering card and a circular piece of wood. The card has a circular piece taken out. The text reads as the following:

The second is a reaction meme with Skipper from the Penguins of Madagascar TV show.

The third is a screenshot showing the value of the Magic the Gathering card from the first picture. At TCGplayer.com the card, a Black Lotus, is shows at the value of $42,000.

[[ end of transmission ]]

After reblogging this post an hour or so ago I wised up and realized there’s no reason to make a game token for a blue flower. To demonstrate the utility of this craft technique, you’d use an orc or an elf or something like that. The first image above has got to be a photoshop. Here’s the original image:

I hope I keep seeing iterations of this post with new additions of “actually that’s photoshopped, THIS is the real image” with an increasing number of wildly expensive Magic cards.

EVERY YEAR

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

We often eat pie at work...for morale.

"As a treat" implies a special occasion, a temporary state. "For morale" makes the joy essential, because you have to have good morale to keep going.

for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits