Sea, Swallow Me - Cocteau Twins

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

Some of us will never forget that the burning times were once memorialized in retina-burning fonts; surrounded by violet spinning pentacles on the backdrop of a starry, twinkling night sky. Somewhere in the distance, a partially loaded midi file attempted to play "how soon is now" while the cursor trailed glittering sparkles across the majestic sky-screen...

The heartless nature of for-profit health care in the wealthiest country in the world.

"All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher...Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness, and I've become an abuser of their once lifesaving powers. I relied on them wrongly to isolate myself, seal my alienation, cut me off from life, control others, and contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment'll be in tears."

- Bruce Springsteen

Hey Tumblr newbies! This is your periodic reminder to not look like a bot!

Recently I've had an uptick in bot followers after a long lull, but I have ALSO had an uptick in followers who, once I click on their blogs, appear to be real, but have the default userpic, no bio, and/or "Untitled" for the blog title, and so look like bots at first glance.

Please don't forget to change your userpic - it doesn't matter what you change it to, you can turn the default one upside-down, just so it's clear a human has interacted with it! While you're at it, change the title of the blog to be literally anything other than "Untitled" and for good measure toss up a few words in your bio; naming a couple fandoms you're in is a good one that immediately marks you as real.

But if you only do one of these, change your userpic for sure. Many people will just see a default userpic and block on sight without doing any further investigation. If you have a default userpic you have probably already been blocked by a few people you followed! Is it fair that Tumblr makes you follow people when you sign up before it lets you change your userpic, and doesn't warn you that the default userpic will make people think you're a bot? No. But that's life on the hellsite.

The facts for March 20, 2023