Hectic Melancholy

UK legislation: Online Safety Act 2023

Brazil legislation: Digital Statute For Children And Adolescents

Apple App Store Age Verification

These are not tumblr specific policies. Tumblr is implementing age verification in response to legislative moves that were made months ago.

Tumblr is a failing social media site that has escaped death multiple times already; they do not have the social cachet to defy state regulatory agencies. We know they won't say no to Apple, either--the porn ban on tumblr was in response to Apple's crackdown on explicit content.

If you did not know this was happening, you were behind the curve. That is fine. You're caught up now. The next step is to link up with people in your country who are working to preserve privacy, to roll back these laws where they exist, and to prevent their passage where they do not. In the US the organization you want is Stop KOSA--in the EU you can start with Fight Chat Control.

I understand that the dictionary tells us living and dying are antonyms because, on the surface, they’re framed and presented as mutually exclusive states: you’re either alive or you’re dead. It simplifies the human experience into neat and manageable boxes as if we move from one "phase" or "stage" to the next in a clean move.

But life doesn’t really work like that, does it? From the moment we begin, we’re also ending. We don’t go from "living" to "dying" as separate stages — we are dying as we live. The dictionary, in its black and white rigid definitions, misses the poetry of it all.

They are gutting voting rights.

They are weakening civil rights protections.

They are challenging the 14th Amendment.

They are redrawing maps.

They are making participation harder.

They are betting on exhaustion.

They are betting on silence.

-having a job

-not having a job

-applying for jobs

-the job market