Tumblr and Boy life

This week I'm looking at two things with a connection.

Firstly as most of you know, Tumblr for me started around April 2018 as an outgrowth from the original ASB site and from this blog although it would be a gross understatement to say I was pretty upset that that first Tumblr and those set up within that initial twenty month period are no longer with us.

With care and after much drama that I could do well without I still have accounts there and recently two things have come into being.

The first was you could pay away advertisements often at odds with your interests and gender too by either a monthly payment or a year subscription.

I'm as not keen on paying for things as the next boy but the reason Tumblr introduced advertising in 2012 was because it needed the money so apart from anything else that does give it a revenue stream and any business in the real world needs one.

The second thing was so much of that stuff just wasn't me so I opted to make a yearly payment being the cheapest option and that's working better.

It doesn't remove the sponsored stuff which in the ideal world I'd soon have as an opt in but it helps.

The other element is to do with how posts display on your Dashboard.

They are now rolling out a optional post size reducer so when scrolling long post don't take up large amounts of space but by tapping/clicking on expand tab you can see the whole if the post interests you.

That to me is sensible.

It's also Thirty Years since Calvin And Hobbes arrived on the cartoon strip scene.

Calvin and Hobbes follows the humorous antics of the title characters: Calvin, a precocious, mischievous and adventurous six-year-old boy; and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger. 

Set in the contemporary suburban United States, the strip depicts Calvin's frequent flights of fancy and friendship with Hobbes also examining Calvin's relationships with his long-suffering parents and with his classmates, especially his neighbour Susie Derkins. 

Hobbes' dual nature is a defining motif for the strip

You see to Calvin, Hobbes is a living anthropomorphic tiger, his best mate, while all the other characters see Hobbes as an inanimate stuffed toy. 

One of things I like about it  is although the series does not frequently mention specific political figures or contemporary events, it does explore broad issues like environmentalism, public education, philosophical quandaries and the flaws of opinion polls.

From a cartoon strip base, it get you to explore and question ideas and practises without preaching.

I follow two Tumblrs connected to this cartoon strip whose main character connects deeply with my understanding of boyhood.