He-who-devours-book - He Who Has A Main Blog

yo, are you the person with accidental math degree, and who gave their sister star money origami and 2000 nickels?? cause like that's the shit i wanna see more

i also accidentally got too many free pizzas from internet strangers, broke my arm trying to impress a crush, had a 3 day hangover in japan, needed stitches in both eyebrows (separate occasions), regularly signed up a  high school classmate to receive free mormon bibles, bought 144 reese peanut butter eggs b/c they were on a great sale, and bought 40 limes for the purpose of getting drunk in a computer science lab

and everything but the pizza was before i had internet followers encouraging me to do dumb crap for attention, so even i have no idea what i’m gonna do next

stinky bug man, that’s why.

hey instead of bullying or scaring you into switching to firefox, let me tell you why i LOVE firefox and how my online life has improved significantly since installing it

- the setup process is easy, and even fun! if you’re using tumblr rn, you can handle it, and if you’re the kind of tumblr user who likes customizing your blog or tinkering with xkit, you can have a lot of fun personalizing really granular settings and picking themes and extensions and everything, it’s very customizable and i happily spent like 2 hours getting everything perfect.

- you can use a command line entry tool to change specific settings right from the search bar! i did this to make firefox stop auto filling my email information since i use a different password locker (which you should too! try bitwarden!), and it was easier than digging through a bunch of submenus for a setting i wasn’t sure existed. you can just turn shit off!

- there’s a preset theme called aurora that’s purple and VERY pretty

- once you get ublock origin and as many other blockers as you’d like set up, no ads, anywhere, ever! streaming sites, youtube, all the basics, totally no stress and no compatibility issues for me

- in browser screenshot and picture in picture functions!! holy shit i use these every day, the PiP is especially helpful, it replaced an extension i used to use on chrome and it’s leagues better and works on all video content pretty much

- overall better downloads management imo, it’s a lot easier to get to your downloads and find them later

- better bookmark system, with the ability to organize your bookmarks with searchable tags and assign them a shortcut you can type into the search bar to go to

- containers! you can have two accounts to the same website open in two different tabs and switch between them without having to switch accounts. also gives firefox the ability to contain facebook and their trackers, so you can click that party invite link without feeling like you just let mark zuckerberg into your house

these were just off the top of my head, i love firefox a lot and actively enjoy using it, which i never felt with chrome! please download firefox!! you will not regret it!!! where’s your fucking rage!!!!!! go!!!!!!!!!

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

Approaching Your World-Building Through Two Perspectives

Creating a new world for a story is intimidating! Sometimes it feels like as you're writing, you're tacking on world-building details that get buried in your draft.

I've also re-read my work and felt like the characters were vivid, but their world was blurry. There are a few ways to help your work when you come across these problems.

Perspective 1: Zoom In From Outer Space

Imagine looking at your world, country, city, or any other location from outer space. Create a new document or grab a fresh sheet of paper and start taking notes as details come to you, like:

Is your world mostly water, land, or a mix of both?

Do the inhabitants of your world survive on oxygen?

Is your protagonist more human or an otherwordly creature?

Where on that planet or in that country does your protagonist's story take place?

After getting these ideas down, you can zoom in a bit closer. Ask yourself questions like:

What's the geography like where your protagonist lives/experiences your plot?

How does society operate in that location? (Are there economic classes, politics influencing their lives, discrimination holding them back, etc.)

Who fits best in that society, who doesn't, and why?

What does your protagonist like about that location and what do they not like?

Zoom in further if you want to start your world's backstory. You should be able to answer things like:

What local or national history created that societal or political system?

Did any historical event take place that influenced your protagonist's current life? (Maybe their grandparents relocated after a regional drought devastated their farms and others nearby. There could have been a national tragedy or success.)

What is your protagonist's personal history with the area? (Are the fond of their hometown because it's where they were born? Did they move there as a kid and meet their antagonist?)

This method is best for people who love to plan their work. Enjoy learning about the world that influence's your protagonist's journey and remember that it's okay to start writing at any point!

Perspective 2: Start With Your Protagonist

You can also start world-building by focusing on your character. Address details of their personality like:

What is their normal routine?

How does their routine work with or against their local society?

Do they enjoy their current lifestyle?

What's most important to them?

What do they believe in, outside of themself and their abilties?

Then you can start asking the most important question—why.

Why does your character never eat meat?

Why doesn't their current life serve their interests?

Why do they have the relationships with friends and family members that they have?

Why do they have their specific set of values?

Why does their life start changing at the inciting incident of your story?

The "whys" will lead you down natural paths to expanding your new world. It's better suited to people who write without planning—just make sure you keep a record of your answers/world-building details along the way!

Play Around With Your World Building Routine

Creating your first in-depth world is a challenge, but it will come much more easily with practice. Try both perspectives in your writing to see what works for you!

WHY IS DRAWING HANDS SO FUCKING HARD

For those of you who are serious about wanting to get out the US, read this master post of all the ideas I've investigated over the years.

For any folks out there with European ancestry who are sick of the United States, I encourage you to get a $40 subscription to Ancestry dot com and begin looking for paperwork on your ancestors going back to the old country. You might already be a citizen of that country and not even know it. There may not even be a limit for how many years have passed between you and your family's emigration. There are Jews with Spanish ancestry who have reclaimed themselves as citizens because of their documentation going back to the 15th century.

I'm talking all birth, marriage, divorce, naturalisation and military documentation between you and whoever in your family was born in Europe/citizen there. Unless your family formally renounced their old citizenships, look into it. HELL, even if they did, look into it. Citizenship laws over there change all the time.

For those of you who do not have ancestry, look into these options:

Latin Americans are eligible to apply for citizenship in Spain after 2 years because of the legacy of colonialism

Anyone under the age of 30 has the right to apply for 1 year long work away visas in other countries. You're not allowed to stay in that country specifically to work longer than 1 year, but if you can move there with your current employer and do well, someone might sponsor a visa if you're passionate about coming back to stay in the country

If you work in the service industry, go ahead and apply for a work away visa. You'll still be approved. While you're there bussing tables, think about grad school abroad and apply somewhere. It's often incredibly cheap compared to the US with discounts and social support for students depending on where you go, and FEDERAL US STUDENT LOANS CAN BE USED FOR ACCREDITED INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES

Grad school is free in Norway, even for foreigners, but you have to cover costs of living

Many international universities have programs offered in English

If you went to a university considered to churn out "High Potential Individuals" then the UK is offering 2 year visas to all students who have graduated within the past 5 years (think universities in the top 15 in the US)

If you are in a STEM field, you can apply for a visa to gain entry to the EU for 6 months to look for work

If you are an ARTIST, Berlin Germany offers a visa specifically for you

If you are in the medical field, check out Doctors without Borders and affiliated organizations that will take you abroad

Your medical licenses are good elsewhere in the world if you're willing to do residency abroad (sorry but I don't make the rules. They do tend to pay residents a fairer wage in the Scandinavian countries, though!)

If you are a contracted seasonal agricultural worker, there are farms in Iceland that are always hiring and will provide you with food and lodging

If you work in energy/nuclear, there are plants abroad looking for people

If you think flights+housing are too expensive to save for to live abroad, then may I remind you that flights abroad are cheaper than US flights right now for the rest of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. You can try to get a remote job or a remote side gig/hustle and from there you can work abroad and try to make it work

If you are worried about taxes, please Google the 330-day rule and residency test concerning US taxes. If you live abroad for 330 days out of the year, then the US only collects taxes from you on income earned above ~$100K a year. You still have to file US taxes, but that number basically becomes your new standard deduction.

If you work in education and are willing to teach, please apply for Fulbrights abroad, or English teaching programs abroad. If you are skeeved out about teaching English, I get it, but please know that people who speak English earn more over their lifetimes, and you would significantly improve the long term career prospects of your students and give them new opportunities

For retirees, just go abroad with your Social security if you have it. As long as you meet the financial requirements of another country and document that you can support yourself and that you aren't going there to work, you are in the clear!

Hi!

I'm pretty new to art and trying to learn color to... weird results. I really love the way you use color in your art, it's like, the prettiest thing ever!! Could you make a tutorial or explain how you do it?

hello!

aw thank youu <3

I can't make a full tutorial right now but the gist of color palettes is finding colors that work together, most colors can work together if you find the right hue, I usually just wing these but it's basically about keeping an eye on the color saturation/brightness and make sure it's in range of the other colors

in a color palette usually you'll want to stick to 4-6 colors (loosely speaking) when it comes to entirely different colors, if you have many similar hues sometimes it can be better to just make it one (for example if you have several small details in a picture that don't necessarily need to be of different colors, u can just use colors already present in the palette for them)

and then there's colors u can use for shading! once you have your base color you use the slider on the color wheel to pick an adjacent shade and then pick a lighter or darker color within range and there u have it

there's just so many possible combinations also like desaturated colors + bright colors, the whole neon colors scale.. color theory stuff like complementary colors, anyway I hope this helps a little!

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

That one time I practiced drawing goats and sheep!