RatCreature's Journal

I'm contemplating whether I shouldn't put the effort in to make myself a "eating popcorn" icon because of the Twitter mess, after years of deciding that I don't need one for online kerfuffles etc., because I tend to just miss drama, and then my "under a rock" one works when I catch up eventually.

I mean, I barely had time to notice the hastily introduced new "official" check marks, before reading a tweet that apparently they got killed again not a day later? But clearly this train wreck overall will go on for a while...

I saw an article about Minnie Mouse getting a redesign with a pantsuit and I can't say that I like the look, though less so because of the pants, but because of the colors. I don't think dark blue with black dots is really Minnie's color. The red with white dots gave a nice contrast

Also, if they wanted to be less gender essentialist with their wardrobe, they'd also let Mickey wear a skirt every now and then.

The visible gender markers in the style are messed up anyway, because basically it's just very long (presumably fake or at least enhanced) eye lashes and rouge that distinguish Minnie from Mickey, aside from their clothes. So from a Watsonian perspective Minnie always puts on makeup to be more female presenting.

I haven't yet looked into the potentially helpful python script that odditycollector linked in the comments to my last post, but I did start the backup export option Tumblr provides yesterday. Only it seems to still be "processing" now.

Mind, I do not have many Tumblr posts, just 81. For comparison I have over 2500 posts here. So I am not a heavy Tumblr user. And yet, the site seems to be unable to export even this few. (My long defunct side Tumblr jamesmcavoywithsloths in its run actually got to 600 posts, which still isn't that many, and Tumblr is "processing" that as well.)

Is their backup just broken right now, because everybody is trying to use it?

Why is there an annoying, pixelated, pooping horse on my Tumblr dashboard? It is not even April 1st yet. How can I make it go away? Why is Tumblr doing these things?

Last night I dreamed about being hassled by Donald Trump. WTF. I think I participated in some game show? I need to watch less US election coverage if my dreams get invaded.

I've just seen US-style processed "cheese" in a spray can sold for the first time in a supermarket here. Granted it was part of some special display dedicated to American foods and not their normal range of products but still.

The most bizarre thing was that it apparently was produced by a Wisconsin company that calls itself "Old Fashioned Foods Inc." which is just-- though maybe it's meant to be ironic.

ETA: Also now that I'm thinking about spray can cheese (and calling that an "old fashioned" food), I don't think I've ever read a fic where Steve Rogers when adjusting to the future/present isn't going the Farmer's Market route, but instead (or additionally) is totally thrilled with all the modern convenience food developments, because "scientific"/"hygienic"/"modern" food is awesome to him. I mean, I think he is of the generation that initially brought us the stuff like TV dinners and spray can cheese and food technology in general in the post war period, that only then in the backlash got its current bad reputation, because now "natural" is fetishized as the best and healthiest food.

Sometimes people are leaving odd comments on AO3. Like this one by inky-pen on my Furry and Animals drawbles collection on AO3. It just says "Can u draw a mixture of a snake and squirrel. Please."

It is somewhat strange to get a comment that doesn't actually say anything about having liked the art that is there, and just asks for a new drawing. And since inky-pen didn't comment from an AO3 account, I don't even know who they are. I did however draw them a Frankenstein snake-squirrel mix, though I'm not sure whether you even get email comment notifications without an AO3 account, so maybe they'll never know.

( for inky-pen )

The Tumblr app has notifications, usually only "So-and-so liked your photo", but sometimes the notification starts differently but then I can't find out what it wanted me to inform about, because when I tap on the notification, it only opens my dash, and when I go on to check account activity nothing shows there either.

I just clicked on a Tumblr notification on my tablet that had popped up without really reading the excerpt, except noting that it wasn't the standard like/reblog thing, but now I have no idea what it was, because there is nothing new in the inbox or the account activity of either of my two Tumblrs, and of course the notification goes away once you tapped it. Argh.

Tumblr has created a way to not show a Tumblr via the web URL but only on the dashboard to followers. But as I understand it, the behavior is that anyone can follow you if they know your name unless you explicitly block them. So content is not actually private as such, because if I for example came across one of these error pages following at a web URL, I could follow the name in the URL and then see the content on my dash, at least unless/until I got blocked.

Only I probably couldn't find any specific content because I'd have to scroll back through my dashboard to see it, since the URLs don't work anymore for anyone, logged in or not, including the owner even, based on the reblog comments?! So if you hide your Tumblr, how could you find or see your old posts if neither archive nor tag links work any longer?

And how does this behave with reblogging? The post says the social functions all work as before, including reblog, does that mean if your followers, who may not even realize you disabled URLs as there is no symbol on the posts like on LJ/DW, can still reblog and it would show on theirs with a proper URL (and be visible to all including search engines if they set their Tumblr for maximal exposure?) or only reblog through the dashboard feeds to their followers but not the public Tumblr?

This implementation of (faux-)privacy doesn't sound like a recipe for wanky misunderstandings and disaster at all... /sarcasm

Checking links can also be hazardous (or at least leave you in need of brain bleach). I just clicked on a story link, the fanfic site has vanished, but now there is a site with porn videos titled "granny fucking video" featuring delightful content such as "dog fucks grandma" videos. At least they weren't autoplay. Yikes.

It adds motivation to also update my xover rec page (which unfortunately right now inadvertently links to this crap), though. On the upside, the story in question is still online elsewhere.