I’m going to start reblogging fanfictions I like.

#1 the majority will be reader insert: i am lonely, fuck you. Let me enjoy this.

#2 there may be smut ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I am a grown ass woman, if I wanna repost smut I enjoy, I’m gonna repost smut I enjoy

#3 they’re gonna be tagged #katysficrecs!

I’ve been reading fanfiction on tumblr since I’ve been on this hellsite, so I thought it’s about time I regularly support the people who make tumblr so enjoyable.

pikadidi:

ms-demeanor:

So You Need To Buy A Computer But You Don’t Know What Specs Are Good These Days

Hi.

This is literally my job.

Lots of people are buying computers for school right now or are replacing computers as their five-year-old college laptop craps out so here’s the standard specs you should be looking for in a (windows) computer purchase in August 2023.

PROCESSOR

• Intel i5 (no older than 10th Gen)
• Ryzen 7

You can get away with a Ryzen 5 but an intel i3 should be an absolute last resort. You want at least an intel i5 or a Ryzen 7 processor. The current generation of intel processors is 13, but anything 10 or newer is perfectly fine. DO NOT get a higher performance line with an older generation; a 13th gen i5 is better than an 8th gen i7. (Unfortunately I don’t know enough about ryzens to tell you which generation is the earliest you should get, but staying within 3 generations is a good rule of thumb)

RAM

• 8GB absolute minimum

If you don’t have at least 8GB RAM on a modern computer it’s going to be very, very slow. Ideally you want a computer with at least 16GB, and it’s a good idea to get a computer that will let you add or swap RAM down the line (nearly all desktops will let you do this, for laptops you need to check the specs for Memory and see how many slots there are and how many slots are available; laptops with soldered RAM cannot have the memory upgraded - this is common in very slim laptops)

STORAGE

• 256GB SSD

Computers mostly come with SSDs these days; SSDs are faster than HDDs but typically have lower storage for the same price. That being said: SSDs are coming down in price and if you’re installing your own drive you can easily upgrade the size for a low cost. Unfortunately that doesn’t do anything for you for the initial purchase.

A lot of cheaper laptops will have a 128GB SSD and, because a lot of stuff is stored in the cloud these days, that can be functional. I still recommend getting a bit more storage than that because it’s nice if you can store your music and documents and photos on your device instead of on the cloud. You want to be able to access your files even if you don’t have internet access.

But don’t get a computer with a big HDD instead of getting a computer with a small SSD. The difference in speed is noticeable.

SCREEN (laptop specific)

Personally I find that touchscreens have a negative impact on battery life and are easier to fuck up than standard screens. They are also harder to replace if they get broken. I do not recommend getting a touch screen unless you absolutely have to.

A lot of college students especially tend to look for the biggest laptop screen possible; don’t do that. It’s a pain in the ass to carry a 17" laptop around campus and with the way that everything is so thin these days it’s easier to damage a 17" screen than a 14" screen.

On the other end of that: laptops with 13" screens tend to be very slim devices that are glued shut and impossible to work on or upgrade.

Your best bet (for both functionality and price) is either a 14" or a 15.6" screen. If you absolutely positively need to have a 10-key keyboard on your laptop, get the 15.6". If you need something portable more than you need 10-key, get a 14"

FORM FACTOR (desktop specific)

If you purchase an all-in-one desktop computer I will begin manifesting in your house physically. All-in-ones take away every advantage desktops have in terms of upgradeability and maintenance; they are expensive and difficult to repair and usually not worth the cost of disassembling to upgrade.

There are about four standard sizes of desktop PC: All-in-One (the size of a monitor with no other footprint), Tower (Big! probably at least two feet long in two directions), Small Form Factor Tower (Very moderate - about the size of a large shoebox), and Mini/Micro/Tiny (Small! about the size of a small hardcover book).

If you are concerned about space you are much better off getting a MicroPC and a bracket to put it on your monitor than you are getting an all-in-one. This will be about a million percent easier to work on than an all-in-one and this way if your monitor dies your computer is still functional.

Small form factor towers and towers are the easiest to work on and upgrade; if you need a burly graphics card you need to get a full size tower, but for everything else a small form factor tower will be fine. Most of our business sales are SFF towers and MicroPCs, the only time we get something larger is if we have to put a $700 graphics card in it. SFF towers will accept small graphics cards and can handle upgrades to the power supply; MicroPCs can only have the RAM and SSD upgraded and don’t have room for any other components or their own internal power supply.

WARRANTY

Most desktops come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty; either of these is fine and if you want to upgrade a 1 year to a 3 year that is also fine. I’ve generally found that if something is going to do a warranty failure on desktop it’s going to do it the first year, so you don’t get a hell of a lot of added mileage out of an extended warranty but it doesn’t hurt and sometimes pays off to do a 3-year.

Laptops are a different story. Laptops mostly come with a 1-year warranty and what I recommend everyone does for every laptop that will allow it is to upgrade that to the longest warranty you can get with added drop/damage protection. The most common question our customers have about laptops is if we can replace a screen and the answer is usually “yes, but it’s going to be expensive.” If you’re purchasing a low-end laptop, the parts and labor for replacing a screen can easily cost more than half the price of a new laptop. HOWEVER, the way that most screens get broken is by getting dropped. So if you have a warranty with drop protection, you just send that sucker back to the factory and they fix it for you.

So, if it is at all possible, check if the manufacturer of a laptop you’re looking at has a warranty option with drop protection. Then, within 30 days (though ideally on the first day you get it) of owning your laptop, go to the manufacturer site, register your serial number, and upgrade the warranty. If you can’t afford a 3-year upgrade at once set a reminder for yourself to annually renew. But get that drop protection, especially if you are a college student or if you’ve got kids.

And never, ever put pens or pencils on your laptop keyboard. I’ve seen people ruin thousand dollar, brand-new laptops that they can’t afford to fix because they closed the screen on a ten cent pencil. Keep liquids away from them too.

LIFESPAN

There’s a reasonable chance that any computer you buy today will still be able to turn on and run a program or two in ten years. That does not mean that it is “functional.”

At my office we estimate that the functional lifespan of desktops is 5-7 years and the functional lifespan of laptops is 3-5 years. Laptops get more wear and tear than desktops and desktops are easier to upgrade to keep them running. At 5 years for desktops and 3 years for laptops you should look at upgrading the RAM in the device and possibly consider replacing the SSD with a new (possibly larger) model, because SSDs and HDDs don’t last forever.

COST

This means that you should think of your computers as an annual investment rather than as a one-time purchase. It is more worthwhile to pay $700 for a laptop that will work well for five years than it is to pay $300 for a laptop that will be outdated and slow in one year (which is what will happen if you get an 8th gen i3 with 8GB RAM). If you are going to get a $300 laptop try to get specs as close as possible to the minimums I’ve laid out here.

If you have to compromise on these specs, the one that is least fixable is the processor. If you get a laptop with an i3 processor you aren’t going to be able to upgrade it even if you can add more RAM or a bigger SSD. If you have to get lower specs in order to afford the device put your money into the processor and make sure that the computer has available slots for upgrade and that neither the RAM nor the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. (one easy way to check this is to search “[computer model] RAM upgrade” on youtube and see if anyone has made a video showing what the inside of the laptop looks like and how much effort it takes to replace parts)

Computers are expensive right now. This is frustrating, because historically consumer computer prices have been on a downward trend but since 2020 that trend has been all over the place. Desktop computers are quite expensive at the moment (August 2023) and decent laptops are extremely variably priced.

If you are looking for a decent, upgradeable laptop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

• 14" Lenovo - $670 - 11th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD
• 15.6" HP - $540 - 11th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD
• 14" Dell - $710 - 12th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD

If you are looking for a decent, affordable desktop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

• SFF HP - $620 - 10th-gen i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
• SFF Lenovo - $560 - Ryzen 7 5000 series, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
• Dell Tower - $800 - 10th-gen i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD

If I were going to buy any of these I’d probably get the HP laptop or the Dell Tower. The HP Laptop is actually a really good price for what it is.

Anyway happy computering.

Everything else is pretty spot on, but are you seriously recommending Dell or HP to people as if they’re not notorious bad actors? Proprietary hardware, shit cooling, preinstalled bloatware, all at usually higher prices :/

Also, since OP didn’t include it:

GRAPHICS CARDS (GPU)

I’m not gonna talk about laptops since I don’t know enough in that area.

Desktops however… Some Processors (CPU) come with integrated graphics some don’t. If your CPU doesn’t have integrated graphics you will need a graphics card. Integrated graphics are serviceable if all you need to do is browse the web/use stuff like microsoft word/google docs.

For Intel all CPUs come with integrated graphics unless the product line suffix ends in an F

For AMD it’s the opposite, only products with the G suffix have integrated graphics

Ok so what if your CPU doesn’t have integrated graphics or you need a stronger card? Well, this all depends on your needs and your budget of course, but I think the “stay within 3 gens” rule of thumb is a good place to start.

Graphics cards have had situations where higher end cards from an older generation ended up more powerful than lower end cards from a newer generation, so it’s a good practice to look up the card you plan to buy and compare it with some of the alternatives. Also if you’re buying a new card for an old desktop double check the dimensions, newer cards are larger and might not fit the case.

Having said that here’s some recommendations:

The newest cards are the Nvidia RTX 4090 (AMD Radeon RX 7900), but they are ridiculously expensive and not really needed for the average user. So I’ll put the minimum at Nivdia RTX 2070 or GTX 1080 (AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT), the great price for power as Nvidia RTX 3060 (AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT), the beefy card that will last you a long while as Nvidia RTX 3090 (AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT).

(via heavymetalvi)

coffeekeyboardsss:

Lord of the rings romance fics:

vici-dixon-stark:

I find myself absolutely hilarious

her-stars:

what if we had matching pearl bat chokers <3

hawkeyedflame:

hawkeyedflame:

touching grass isn’t enough some of y'all need to drive out to the countryside and look at the stars

this post was aimed at the discourse-addled and terminally online, but i’m glad it’s reaching an audience of people who are just excited about stargazing in general

(via ankh3125)

quasi-normalcy:

overton-defenestration:

quasi-normalcy:

microwave-and-dishwasher-safe2:

lovetheirloves:

tdhppjpurple:

lovetheirloves:

lovetheirloves:

tricornking:

lovetheirloves:

tricornking:

not100bees:

calamitys-child:

calamitys-child:

calamitys-child:

I truly am obsessed with how Knives Out was like. Hello Daniel Craig, man who has spent the past two decades of his career being alternately beaten up and objectified playing an action hero with no personality. Would you like to please put on a shirt and an incomprehensible vaguely Texan accent and flex your character acting dark comedy muscles as well as your pecs for a while. And he’s like BOY WOULD I and they made a work of art. Also love that they put Chris Evans in sweaters. Get your beefcakes then dress them nice make them soft and give them some bonkers character work to do it’s what cinema needs more of

I love that several people have responded to this with “op I forgive you cause you’re Scottish but that’s not a Texan accent” which is fair thank you I appreciate it but no two people have agreed on what accent it is which is also Absolutely fair and hilarious as a reaction to this film

Cannot stress enough that I do not know what the fuck a foghorn leghorn is but literally a hundred people have said it to me so far so I’m assuming it’s important to, like, Americans

The idea that Foghorn Leghorn,

The Rhode Island rooster from Looney Toons, is one of the Elder Gods of America, is honestly fascinating from a theological and folkloric viewpoint

Pardon me, but he is a LEGHORN, not a RIR. It’s in his NAME. Leghorns are an Italian breed. And yes, he is an elder god.

According to Foghorn’s Tvtropes page:

Presumably, it’s less that Foghorn Leghorn is a Rhode Island Rooster and more that he’s a Rooster who lives in Rhode Island, possibly a Central Virginian Leghorn Rooster living in Rhode Island, though that implies a complicated and interesting life story that took him from Central Virginia all the way to Rhode Island

I would not rely on TV Tropes as an unbiased source. Wikipedia simple says his species is officially “rooster” and mentions a Leghorn being a breed of chicken. TV Tropes probably thinks the Cornflakes chicken is a RIR too.

I am potentially willing to concede he is a “barnyard mix” (cross between breeds) and his father, Harold Leghorn, was a leghorn and his unnamed mother was a RIR or other dark variety.

I love this site.

Sometimes it’s 1:30 am and you own chickens and you’re drinking whiskey in the bath tub and accuracy about iconic fictional chickens is the hill to die on, ok, and that’s why I love Tumblr. 

Where this post started

Where it ended up

I just love the implication that TV Tropes is somehow systematically biased against a type of chicken

I think it’s time to follow the arc of this rainbow to its inevitable terminus

#benoit blanc#ah say#ah say suh#ah yew implyin a particular#prejudice if yew will#towahds one specific breed of chicken#this is cleahly highly#ah do say#highly irregulah

(via theragamuffininitiative)

roach-works:

meanderingorange:

gallusrostromegalus:

katy-l-wood:

A BEAR ATE MY BEST HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER.

Rude.

Someone tell that bear he’s not supposed to eat that with the skin on.

I live in South Africa. And if you live in South Africa and you have any contact with people from the US or Canada you might have run into a question about wildlife like lions and elephants roaming our streets. Most South Africans get pretty offended by questions like this. We are a civilized country, our large and dangerous wildlife gets contained in properly fenced parks. 

I use to get offended by this until I visited a few places in Canada and realized that the reason why you ask is that some of your large and dangerous wildlife does simply roam the countryside and sometimes make excursions into town.

This honestly blew my mind. What do you mean, you have bears just walking around? What the hell? 

north americans don’t all encounter deadly megafauna on our porches and front lawns but it happens often enough that we all think this is a reasonable amount of gigantic animal to happen to your house. so when we think of africa we kinda imagine it like this:

like. if we had elephants here. this is what we would be putting up with on the regular. what do you mean you guys are more sensible than us.

(via theragamuffininitiative)

sunny-platypi:

Just came back from the Barbie movie and realized something as an LA local

Ken walked more than 2 hours away from Barbie when he discovered toxic masculinity.

This himbo walked 14 miles in one day and left Barbie to have an existential crisis for like 5 hours. I love this movie

zlobskiy:

bishopfish:

bishopfish:

Imagine being a tuna (Atlantic bluefin, Thunnus thynnus). You are a super predator, over six feet long and almost a ton. You are as beautiful and shiny and mercilessly efficient as a sports car, a true marvel of the sea. But you taste so fucking good

I agree with you and also think this is some kind of philosophical point. Cruel efficiency will not save you when you have soft delicious insides

i have good news for the person who wrote that tag and bad news for sports car drivers

(via marinebiologyshitposts)

anxietyproblem:

(via moonlight-fern)