By Sara Wheeler, via Geeks Are Sexy.

I say “in case,” because there were rumors of this last week, and Yahoo announced that they’d be announcing the purchase of Tumblr yesterday, and even when I turned on the radio this morning, it to hear legitimate news outlets attempting to talk about the ball of bizarre that is the Tumblr blogging platform. I also say “in case,” because Tumblrers have been understandably flipping their wigs about it, so I should say up front, “in case,” that the above image isn’t an officially changed logo, it’s just something that the internet whipped up in the past few days. Other things the internet has whipped up in the past few days? The idea that Yahoo is going to eradicate fandom blogs from Tumblr.

Yeah. That’s not a real thing, gullible underbelly of Tumblr. Lets talk about real things.

Are you familiar with the glorious Tumblr phenomenon known as Swimming Anime? If not, Susana covered it in-depth when it burst onto the scene in a cloud of chlorine and homoerotic tension last month. But for tl;dr purposes, the basics are these: A company called Kyoto Animation (or KyoAni) created a 30-second promo for an anime about four male members of a swim team. It wasn’t a real anime; they were just showing off their animation skills. But Tumblr latched onto it, creating characters, ships, fanart, fic, and in-depth meta within 48 hours, all for a show that was never going to exist.

Until now. Congratulations, Tumblr. Swimming Anime is being made.

I can’t imagine that many of our readers aren’t familiar with “Science Bros,” but just in case, let me recap: It’s the pairing, sometimes platonically but often decidedly not, of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark in The Avengers. It’s sunshine and rainbows and flowers and science.

And now Mark Ruffalo ships it.

When Zoë found an Uruk-hai scimitar in an antique shop while visiting a friend she bought it without hesitation, even though it cut into her gas money. And then when she got home she started taking amazing pictures. Turns out a crudely forged but brutal weapon has a surprising number of alternate uses.

Caldwell Tanner didn’t use HBO’s Join the Realm website to create these unique House Sigils. Instead, he came up with his own designs for what popular websites might hang from their proverbial castle walls if they lived in the world of Game of Thrones. And we decided to join in on the fun. Look at the House Sigils and mottos from Twitter, Wikipedia, The Mary Sue, and more!

Tumblr is no stranger to ironically inventing a fandom, complete with ‘shipping, art, music videos, role-playing blogs, fanfiction and unique vocabulary in a very short amount of time based on a very small, shall we say, canon. Take, for example, the ‘ship Creamsicle, a peaceful outpouring of effort in reaction to a Tumblr flamewar.

This time, though, it’s Swimming Anime, a fandom based on one thirty second promo for an animation company that is not even a real show. In any way. And it might just be me, but it seems to be less of a tongue in cheek response than usual.

Jumping on Tumblr this morning, you may have noticed a change. Starting today, the site is rolling out an updated dashboard. It will allow users to post a photo, video, quote, etc. without having to actually leave the dashboard. You can see what that looks like above. If you have multiple blogs you can access all of them in the same spot. Tumblr told Mashable this is “a step toward making the Dashboard a smaller and more streamlined experience.” I’ve yet to get the updated look, have you?

(via Mashable)

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A little while ago there was an XKCD picture that explained the Up-Goer Five, “the only flying space car that’s taken anyone to another world,” using only the ten hundred most used words in the very large group of words that I’m using right now. The Up-Goer Five is not easy to explain, so this was pretty funny, but also pretty interesting. Now on Tumblr, Theo Sanderson, Anne Jefferson, and Chris Rowan have a world wide computer place where men and women like the men and women who made the Up-Goer Five can explain how their jobs work, using only those same ten hundred words. They even made a world wide computer place that shows you what words to pick!

We think women who do things like making Up-Goer Fives are very cool, so we want to show you some of the things they do here on our world wide computer place! There are lots more at Sanderson, Jefferson, and Rowan’s world wide computer place. And in case you haven’t guessed already, these words were also written using their word-picking computer place.

It’s finally happened. Can the Tumblrpocalypse be far behind?