Remember a few months ago when it felt like every single website in existence updated their privacy policy? That was because of GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation from the EU.
Another part of GDPR? Right of access / right to data portability.
What this means is that if you ask for it, companies are to give you access to your data so that you could theoretically move it to another service. Many companies have done this by allowing you to export your data and download it. Even if a company doesn’t provide an automated way, you should still be able to contact them and they should provide your data – it doesn’t have to be automatically generated and downloadable.
Tumblr does provide an automated way to export your blog. This should be done individually for each sideblog as well, if you want. (These are instructions for the website – not the app.)
Go to your blog settings page, ie https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/<your-blog-name>.
Look for the Export section (currently at the bottom)
Click the “Export <your-blog-name>” button.
Depending on the size of your blog, it may take a while to generate the export. It will say that it’s processing, and you can reload the page and come back later to check if it’s done.
When your export is processed and ready, the Export section will have a button to download.
Once you’ve downloaded the file, extract it to a folder on your computer. It will contain:
A media folder with images, gifs, videos, and audio files.
A messages xml file. Your messages are in here, even if it doesn’t look “human readable” and is gibberish to you, I promise. There are tools that will “beautify” xml to make it more readable.
A posts.zip file. Extract this and you’ll see an html folder that has an html file for each of your posts.
At that [rehearsal], Tom saw that the production designer had put a giant lobster tank in the center of the restaurant and that was just a true design choice just to make it seem like a fancy restaurant. As soon as Tom sees it, he goes, ‘Well, I’m going to go in the tank.’
Even if you’re Tom Hardy, you don’t just jump in a lobster tank and call it day. “The designer was like, ‘We didn’t build it for somebody to go in!’” Fleischer says. “And, you know, they were all live lobsters.”
Then improvised direction required the rejiggering of major elements to allow for Eddie/Venom to plunge into and feast, and for Hardy to do it all safely. As anyone who witnessed the The Mask-like spectacle, they pulled off the construction and stunt work under the wire. And the lobsters gobbled up by a Venomized Eddie? Marshmallow crustaceans with chocolate syrup blood.
I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
?????
There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:
“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”
THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU
anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice
There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.
Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.
Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.
No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.” A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.
I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.
Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.
I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?
There’s been something in the water since we first learned to float on it. Not marine life, although there’s more of that than we’ll ever know. Not rocks and currents and sand bars and icebergs either, although they’ve all taken more than their share of human life.
But something deeper. Something Other. Something not natural.
Sailors have always been superstitious.
Not one of them described it right.
You don’t hear about it so much now that we don’t lose ships anymore, really, not like we did at the height of the sea trade when barely an inch of ocean floor didn’t bear some wreck or other. And better ships and GPS and weather satellites have all played their part in that.
But we have protection now that we didn’t before. They don’t interfere with war and battle, even on behalf of what used to be their country, or with rocks and weather and human stupidity. Those are concerns for the living.
But the Other Things, the Things that shouldn’t be there – They can’t get to us now without a fight. It’s a fight They haven’t won in a very long time.
As long as we remember them, as long as we call out to them – not very often, just once a year will do – they will keep protecting us from the Things that go bump in the deep.
More than fifty submarines, Still On Patrol.
I love everything about this, but it’s the last bit that made me say “okay now I’ll reblog it.”
Storytime. Cooking in a different country makes you realize how many things you take for granted are just, Not A Thing Here. Like apple juice. Surely you can find apple juice at your local Athenian grocery store, right? Wrong. Greeks drink orange juice and peach juice and mixed fruit juice and sour cherry juice, but… plain old apple juice, nope, not so much. You’ll have a hard time finding vanilla extract in Greece too, since Greeks are used to vanilla powder in little plastic capsules and you have to go to specialty shops for the liquid stuff. Sour cream is virtually nonexistent here (but hey, it’s the land of yogurt, which is a good enough substitute). But surprisingly cornmeal (which is a specialty ingredient in the UK) is everywhere, since Greeks have their own versions of cornbread and corn pudding.
So basically: I knew it might be impossible find vegetable shortening (aka Crisco) for my Thanksgiving pie crust here in Athens. Crisco is pretty uniquely American, and Greeks are more likely to use phyllo than shortcrust anyway. That said, there are a handful of specialty shops in central Athens that sell things like Heinz baked beans and custard powder and Worcestershire sauce and other Weird Foreign Foods™ so us Sad Homesick Expats don’t have to go hungry (I’m always reminded of A Passage to India and their corned beef and tinned peas). So I went on Skroutz (the search engine for buying stuff in Greece) and typed in “vegetable shortening” to see if any stores carried it.
A notification came up asking me to confirm that I was over 18 years old?
???
I clicked “yes”??
Turns out there is, in fact, one shop in Athens that carries vegetable shortening. It’s a sex shop. The shortening is listed under “sex essentials”, as lube. For fisting. It’s literally called “βούτυρο για fisting” – “butter for fisting”.
I decided I didn’t need a flaky pie crust that badly.
me age 7: this pokemon is named cupcake becos its random and cute
me age 12: this pokemon is named
Petri, named after petrichor, the name for the scent of rain. a close second was Nimbus, named after nimbostratus clouds in which rain forms. i was very tempted to go with Proteus, a greek shapeshifter who ruled the sea, but i realized that would be more fitting for a pokemon with a stronger attack stat. i researched these names endlessly and they took 2 hours to come up with.
me age 15: this pokemon is named sleepy becos he looks sleepy
Me at 26: this Pokemon is named ‘oh shit! he’ so when they use an attack it says: “oh shit! He used double slap!”
Me at 29: This Pokemon would be named ‘oh shit!’ but online gameplay meant Game Freak cracked down on profanity
Iron in the Sand 