Catholic Pez

I think one of the biggest obstacles to getting a social media platform off the ground in 2023 is that big sites like Twitter and YouTube have created an expectation that registering an account should automatically come with effectively unlimited storage and bandwidth for whatever media you care to post, which creates a hard entry barrier for any platform without major financial backing. Like, we can wax rhapsodic about early 2000s forum culture all we like, but one of the main unwritten rules that allowed smaller forums to survive was never turning image hosting on for free accounts – either you made people figure out their own solutions for hosting images, or you charged a fee. If you were lucky, a forum with free registration might have let you host a banner for your signature on their servers, but that was it! Unless someone manages to convince large numbers of folks that a text-only social media platform is worth participating in, I'm not sure there's any good way forward for smaller outfits at this point.

Alain Delon 1935 - 2024

Longest application process ever. So many interview rounds. So much traveling.

It’s Andor Time! Do you have a question for the cast of Andor? They may have answers!

Submit your questions here, and come back for their Answer Time on September 21st at 12pm PT / 3pm ET.

Dearest Tumblr!

I have returned from my meditative retreat atop the secluded mountain of the Pikaman, to resume my duties as Chief Merch Officer of the @emporium.

But Abstract Reactions will forever be in my heart — I’m even considering getting them tattooed! 

Just to refresh your memories, on April 1st, Tumblr provided you with a bunch of Reactions to use on posts! Specifically, the emojis I had most recently used on my phone… I’m SO proud of how much incredible ENGAGEMENT the product received. 

Over 100,000 of you spirited react-ers participated — and how many reactions did everyone use, you might wonder? Well, wonder no longer, I’ll tell ya! 

🐛 was used over 20 million times.

🧀 was used over 7 million times.

🦀 was used over 3.8 million times.

And tied for fourth, 4️⃣ and 👻 and 🐴 were used over 2 million times each!

The special SUPER reactions of 🦄, Pikaman, 🍪, and even me, Brick myself, were unlocked over 15,000 times!

And at least one clever person figured out that I never thought about checking if someone could send negative reactions, so it turns out someone sent in over 120 million negative 🧀 reactions! So many cheesed posts got un-cheesed with that anti-cheese — and you know what, I’m not even mad about it! 

Here’s to 🐛! Cheers!

Yours clickingly, Brick

I’m Ngl I know people want the bots gone and the tumblr staff to focus on that instead of fun stuff, but two things:

A) Bots are extraordinarily difficult to get rid of. It’s like trench warfare and bots adapt to every new security measure you might take. The staff want them gone as much as you do if not more because it probably actually affects their daily job tasks lol

B) Fun shit like checkmarks and vanilla extract tumblers help fund the site so we don’t have to have ads that suck on it.

I know you want a better experience, but the staff are probably working on multiple things at the same time. Fun shit and maintenance shit. And they’re probably doing everything they can. Re-fucking-lax.

So good to have John Frusciante back on the guitar!

‘velvet-drive’

jupiter & the galilean moons

composite of two shots, both taken on my 8'' dobsonian and ASI178mc astronomy camera at 1200mm. first shot was overexposed to show the 4 moons of jupiter, second shot was exposed to get detail on jupiter itself

Goncharov to himself: Will you be here when I return?

To this day, that line gives me chills.