Those tags where people write essays. I’m obsessed with those. They’re downright amazing linguistically!
I even proposed to do a research experiment on phrases, the juncture of syntax and semantics, and tumblr tags for my Computational Corpus Linguistics course. The teacher approved the project, but I ended up discarding it for a later time because of how difficult and involved the task would have been. There were too many problems to work out in the experiment and I realized I didn’t have enough time to do what I want.
The tags are intriguing for multiple reasons. They frankly make me run around like a chicken with his head cut off – except happier.
Syntax and Cognitive Science The tags show some very interesting things about phrasal structure. People divide up long sentences in tags during pauses. It’s unique “punctuation” and it says a lot for how people chunk thoughts, process them, and organize longer statements. It’s interesting where you see punctuation added or deleted; it helps you see cognitively how people are processing phrases.
Semantics The tags are full of very interesting expression techniques. One of the problems of written language has been that it lacks body language, which constitutes over half of our expression in conversation. It means that written language can be very easily misinterpreted for intent (think of how many texts get misinterpreted). But tumblrites and other social media savvy people have compensated and made written language HUGELY expressive. You see it in the tags. You see people use unique punctuation effects like deleting spaces, intentionally misspelling words, adding capitalization, and much more. There are emoticons, keyboard smashes, explosions of exclamation marks, and so many beautiful ways of expressing emotion. And people use lots of words in fascinating ways to get their thoughts across. It’s endless.
Diachronic Linguistics Historical linguistics is really cool. It’s about language change. Internet speech in tumblr has the latest, newest words and word units out there. You see so much beautiful language change happening. It’s how “Rickrolled” became a verb and “smol” grew its own set of recognized connotations. Word meanings change, take on new meanings, are filled with so much amazing sociolinguistic context. Abbreviations are made for fandom content. Abbreviations eventually become treated like real words, and then they take on new suffixes and become verbs and adjectives and nouns (”I lol’ed”). There are certain phonotactic paradigms English speakers subconsciously follow for creating new shipping names; I’ve even seen a linguistics paper on that topic. People are able to understand new terms they’ve never seen before; I’ve never heard of “Ruffheat,” but if someone said that to me, I’d know right away they’re talking about a Ruffnut x Heather ship. If someone told me “Hiccaang,” somehow I’d be able to figure out they’re talking about some Aang x Hiccup crack ship. We can just do that automatically because we’ve built our own compounding systems! And not only do we do that, but language changes SO FREAKISHLY RAPIDLY on tumblr it’s constant excitement.
Sociolinguistics Language varies based upon different groups we are a part of, and tumblr is full of many communities. Fandom communities, the science side of tumblr, the social justice community, and more are all out there. Each group has its own diction, vocabulary, and more. It’s also amazing how this collides with the fact that tumblr is global; the conversations arising aren’t just from native English speakers, but individuals whose first language might be Malay, Khmer, German, Korean, Japanese, or Finnish.
So yeah. And where you see all this amazingness the most is in the tags.
Believe me, I tag browse a lot because the content there is GOLD. Pure GOLD.
Someday I do hope to take my tumblr experiences and conduct a legitimate linguistics research study. It can teach us a lot about contemporary English, internet English, and how it’s used around the globe linguistically.
The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. If you were to look at this, you would die instantly.
The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.
Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing, this picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. The Elephant’s Foot is almost as if it is a living creature.
Friendly reminder that this blob of core material was so hot and dense, it melted/burned through three floors of the building before coming to rest in the lowest basement.
And there’s now a unique species of black mold that feeds off the gamma radiation it produces.
Is no one else seriously freaked out by that mold? No? Just me, then?
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhy was someone shooting it with a kalashnikov
dps check
I mean, the Elephant’s Foot is very very dangerous, but it wouldn’t kill you instantly. When it was first created about a minute of exposure would give you a fatal dose (x, x). That number is now around one hour. And yes, that photo was taken with mirrors, but you know which one wasn’t?
Yeah, this is a selfie. The guy set the timer on the camera and went and stood by it, and it produced this horrifying image that now haunts my dreams. The reason all the photos from Chernobyl are grainy and poor-quality, by the way, is due to radiation. The cameras were fine; radiation just… does that.
Anyway, that guy’s name is Artur Korneyev- and I use ‘is’ because he’s still alive! He helped to build the original sarcophagus which encased reactor 4 after the meltdown, and kept going back inside with reporters to be like ‘look how fuckin weird this is’. He helped plan the New Safe Confinement which now surrounds the sarcophagus, and would probably have helped build it too if they didn’t full-on ban him.
A quote:
‘Korneyev’s sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his life’s work. “Soviet radiation,” he joked, “is the best radiation in the world.”‘
Possibly the coolest guy alive? I’m tempted to think so.
Honestly, I feel like Chernobyl has been shunted into this category of like, ‘a lot of innocent and naive people died horribly’, when in reality a lot of tough as fuck people saved everybody else. The oft-told story of the ‘suicide mission’ to dive into the reactor and open the valves of the pool? Yeah, all three of the men who dove lived. One died in 2005 of heart failure; the other two are still alive.
A total of 31 direct and 15 indirect deaths are thought to have occurred from the Chernobyl disaster. Long-term deaths are… difficult to measure. Oh, and there’s a few hundred people still living in the exclusion zone.
If you’re at all interested, I really recommend reading up about Chernobyl- and, in particular, what was done to contain it and deal with the radiation. This is a beautiful write-up, and the wiki page is also worth checking out.
A lot of people did absolutely incredible work and it goes unrecognised most of the time.
And yeah, fungus is always the fucking weirdest.
I know very little about the Chernobyl incident beyond the basics, but finding out that they built a sarcophagus to contain part of it is metal as fuck and I’m into it
You know, even though I grew up knowing it was possible to around circumnavigate the world via the ocean, I had never seen it from this way before. Holy shit.
Me to american animation: I know your stories are great buy why does your animation suck so bad?
American animation: We have to create simplified characters to make the movement faster and more creative and interesting.
Me glancing at Japan:
Me: k.
Hey you know what studios do in America? Due to animators unionizing, instead of paying all the animators proper wage they started sending animation to be done over seas to lower labor costs. Now most studios’ animation are shipped to Korea and China and etc., which means the designs for the characters have to be simplified for easy character animation. Not to mention the history of American animation overall and how the American cartoon style has led towards more simplified styles over the years.
Also animation in Japan, while it does have plenty sakuga stuff, are actually just budget dumps for the best fight scenes. During normal scenes, characters can be very static and has a lot of holds. There’s also the mouth-flapping thing that a lot of animators in America detest. Everything is revolved around budgets for both countries. For America, to pay animators working wages they decided to cut costs and ship labor overseas. For Japan it means terrible working hours and labor, where plenty of animators have fallen ill or even die in their own cubicles.
So watch your fucking language and learn animation history. People like you are the reason why a lot of studios are cutting costs on their workers in America.
“why is your animation so bad?” *posts gif of good animation*
OP i read three words to this post and my eyes rolled back to my head. As someone that has a degree in animation pleaseeee shut the fuck up and educate yourself
why do whiny nerd boys complain about english localizations of horny anime games making the girls wear a bit more clothing when they should be complaining about kingdom hearts 3 turning winnie the pooh into an amorphous white blob in china
justice for winnie the pooh
I thought this was a surreal shitpost but apparently pooh, and just pooh as a character specifically, is banned from China all because a very lighthearted meme came to compare him to China’s leader
rip tumblr 