Nyiur theme

A ghost is just a kid in a sheet

The Elrics enjoying a moment of rest <3

Of course Saturn brought its ring light.

On June 25, 2023, our James Webb Space Telescope made its first near-infrared observations of Saturn. The planet itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength, since methane gas absorbs almost all the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. The icy rings, however, stay relatively bright, leading to Saturn’s unusual appearance in this image.

This new image of Saturn clearly shows details within the planet’s ring system, several of the planet’s moons (Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys), and even Saturn’s atmosphere in surprising and unexpected detail.

These observations from Webb are just a hint at what this observatory will add to Saturn’s story in the coming years as the science team delves deep into the data to prepare peer-reviewed results.

Download the full-resolution image, both labeled and unlabeled, from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Answer: Hey there, @atomicrobotlive!

We love this idea. We would certainly consider it a paid feature, or a perk of such a paid feature, sometime in the future. It’s worth adding it is not on our immediate roadmap right now, but things can change, so keep an eye on @changes and consider this idea stuck to our drawing board. This is where we want to use that screengrab of Charlie in It’s Always Sunny… you know the one.

In the meantime, thanks for your feedback and keep the questions coming.

Best,

—Bohdan and Cyle (Tumblr Engineering)

We’re starting to roll out a polls feature for the post editor across all platforms. Yes, that’s all platforms. That’s iOS, Android, and web. You should all have access to this in the next few days. And what’s more, it’s super easy to use.

Simply select the newly added orange poll icon (on web, it appears when you start a new content block in the post editor, on mobile it’s in your toolbar).

Write your question.

Add at least 2, at most 10 response options for people to choose from. There's a character limit on these, it's about as long as the Puss in Boots option offered above.

Set the poll duration to one day or one week. 

You can add some commentary to your poll or let it speak for itself. 

And, just as with any post, you can toggle who sees the poll by using your community labels. Or you can go wild and blaze it if it meets the content guidelines for blazing. 

Come across a poll in the wild? Have your say! Click on your chosen response. Congratulations, you’ve just voiced an opinion.

Gotcha! While you’re here, check out some of this text formatting.

Bigger text ✨

This is bold, and this is italics. This is strikethrough. (I'm whispering this in small text.) This is not a suspicious link at all. This text is colourful!

This is a bulleted list.

I can add text formatting here too.

We take a break here to enjoy Lucille.

This is a numbered list.

It’s where you list items.

And numbers appear next to them.

Groundbreaking.

As one person once said:

Look at me, I'm an indented block!

I'm a quote block! Someone definitely said this at some point.

Juliet: What is this? Romeo: I think we've been summoned for an example chat post again. Juliet: Not again...

We have reached the end. Or have we?

Remember to stay hydrated, and follow @changes for Tumblr updates! 💖

Crab Day t-shirt • $13.00 – $15.00

“Want to show the world your dedication to the Crab Cause and prove that you’re such a good friend (because you gifted a crab to another user) and such a good tumblr user (because you supported the website!)! Express yourself with this feisty little guy on a shirt!” Connor (Tumblr user & designer of the t-shirt)

About the Shirt

Canvas 3001 Shirt

Retail fit & Unisex sizing

Side seams

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

Credit card companies are anti-porn. You’ve probably heard how Pornhub can’t accept credit cards anymore. Or seen the new rules from Mastercard. Whatever crypto-utopia might come in the coming decades, today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy. The vast majority of Automattic’s revenue comes from people buying our services and auto-renewing on credit cards, including the ads-free browsing upgrade that Tumblr recently launched. If we lost the ability to process credit cards, it wouldn’t just threaten Tumblr, but also the 2,000+ people in 97 countries that work at Automattic across all our products.

App stores, particularly Apple’s, are anti-porn. Tumblr started in 2007, the same year the iPhone was released. Originally, the iPhone didn’t have an App Store, and the speed of connectivity and quality of the screen meant that people didn’t use their smartphone very much and mostly interacted with Tumblr on the web, using desktop and laptop computers (really). Today 40% of our signups and 85% of our page views come from people on mobile apps, not on the web. Apple has its own rules for what’s allowed in their App Store, and the interpretation of those rules can vary depending on who is reviewing your app on any given day. Previous decisions on what’s allowed can be reversed any time you submit an app update, which we do several times a month. If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we’d probably have to shut the service down. If you want apps to allow more adult content, please lobby Apple. No one in the App Store has any effective power, even multi-hundred-billion companies like Facebook/Meta can be devastated when Apple changes its policies. Aside: Why do Twitter and Reddit get away with tons of super hardcore content? Ask Apple, because I don’t know. My guess is that Twitter and Reddit are too big for Apple to block so they decided to make an example out of Tumblr, which has “only” 102 million monthly visitors. Maybe Twitter gets blocked by Apple sometimes too but can’t talk about it because they’re a public company and it would scare investors.

There are lots of new rules around verifying consent and age in adult content. The rise of smartphones also means that everyone has a camera that can capture pictures and video at any time. Non-consensual sharing has grown exponentially and has been a huge problem on dedicated porn sites like Pornhub – and governments have rightly been expanding laws and regulations to make sure everyone being shown in online adult content is of legal age and has consented to the material being shared. Tumblr has no way to go back and identify the featured persons or the legality of every piece of adult content that was shared on the platform and taken down in 2018, nor does it have the resources or expertise to do that for new uploads.

Porn requires different service providers up and down the stack. In addition to a company primarily serving adult content not having access to normal financial services and being blocked by app stores, they also need specialized service providers – for example, for their bandwidth and network connections. Most traditional investors won’t fund primarily adult businesses, and may not even be allowed to by their LP agreements. (When Starbucks started selling alcohol at select stores, some investors were forced to sell their stock.)

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs.