what a pleasant mess life can be

Always good to start the week off with some good news! This is impressive recovery by any standards and good news not just for people living in these coastal areas, but for all of us. We already know mangroves store up to five times as much carbon as land forests, create and sustain the livelihoods of communities that live in their borders, and are home to an incredible variety of biodiversity. We rely on them much more than we realize.

So, companies are tracking you no matter what you do, but this specifically is something I care about deeply.

Essentially, when you share a link, sometimes it has extra data that tracks where it comes from and goes.

Opening Spotify, clicking the first item, and using the share button, I get something like open.spotify.com/track/4P0f1HTaA2UwtLJGryNgJZ?si=DBvbfihOSweU1KHj9Mib8w

That ?si=...........…. is the tracker. It tells Spotify who clicks on the link and ties it to you, meaning Spotify knows who your friends are even if you never follow them.

Similarly, if on Amazon or EBay in the browser, I get something like www.ebay.com/itm/146493392451?_skw=lenovo&itmmeta=............&hash=item................&itmprp=enc..............

And, similarly, everything after the question mark is tracking you. I had to blank it out because it was so long!

There is an exception for a few things (I.E. the v=..... on YouTube, but not the si=..... on YouTube)

The general rule is delete everything after the ? and if it breaks, add something back.

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

Here's a UK version:

a health policy paper has been published saying the name is officially updated to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS)

polyendocrine= multiple endocrine factors

metabolic = affecting/affected by metabolism

ovarian = from the ovaries

essentially, instead of using the symptomatic term (many people with PMOS do not develop cysts) the new term widens the diagnostic area and makes it easier to diagnose, treat, and do research on people with PMOS (even atypical types, such as no cysts).

it may seem like a waste of time to change a name instead of focusing on research, but for a lot of medical professionals a name can be associated with a hard set collection of symptoms, so the name needs to change to acknowledge that the disorder is not well understood and has a broader, subtler, and often missed set of symptoms. for example ADD is considered an antiquated/unused term, and now comes under the ADHD umbrella. in healthcare names and terminology changes all the time, and this is a positive change. your local healthcare professional may not know about this unless theyre really up on the news though!

in case you want to read about the name change process that was published in the Lancet (one of the most impactful and well respected medical journals):

It's probably already been spread around here enough already, but in case anyone's missed it; 7 hours after launch, commander Reid Wiseman, dealing with tech issues, uttered the generational quote "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working."

After fixing the issues that were afflicting the onboard toilet, mission specialist Christina Koch (who has quickly become my favourite of the four) laughingly said “I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”

On Easter Sunday, the Artemis II crew hosted a makeshift egg hunt, by hiding packets of dehydrated scrambled eggs around their Orion capsule.

The way the crew always makes sure to make it very clear they're in space when doing interviews. From stuff like Wiseman just hanging out floating sideways on screen or Koch letting her hair loose so it can freely span out flowing around her.

While in transit, the crew decided to record a parody of those bad 80s sitcom intros where everyone turns and smiles at the camera.

When the crew reached the furthest point from Earth in the mission, they jokingly clambored over each other in an effort to get to the far side of the capsule, so that they could individually claim to be the furthest person from earth.

At the same time, on the ISS which was at the time on the other side of earth, the 7 astronauts onboard had a light-hearted race to the far side of the station, making jokes about being the furthest humans from Artemis.

On the way back to earth, NASA actually managed to establish an audio call between the crews of the ISS and Artemis II (where they shared the above info), and Koch called one member of the ISS crew, Jessica Meir, her "astro-sister" as the two of them previously spacewalker together in 2019. Meir then responded I'm so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are a few miles apart" (a few here being 230,000).

- It was buggy. Tags not showing up for an OP past even an empty reblog did not appear to be intended (or at least, it was not mentioned in the announcement), and is a MAJOR problem. Specifically, it undoes the major update from around 5 years ago which was heavily praised by the userbase (one of few tumblr updates to actually be widely well recieved) which allowed a poster to see tags in their activity feed. If this was the only problem, they could have launched a bug fix. Same goes for not being able to turn off reblogs.

- Userbase unity? Well, maybe. Specifically - the userbase had a swift, harsh, and overbearing response to this update. Most of the complaints were the same: this will exacerbate harassment, this will disrupt the flow of communication, this will make it impossible for someone to maintain their posts. Big names in the tumblr ecosystem came down hard, fast, and with significant concern: if this stays in place, I will have to leave - this place will not do what I need it to do. Much of the userbase said the same, sharing alternate blog hosting sites and doing the thing we always do when this ship looks like sinking. Additionally, their replies and feedback forms were obviously being flooded. This put real pressure on their workers in the office, which puts financial pressure on the company. I think the most disrupting tactic though, was going offsite. I checked out their instagram and twitter comments; they were flooded. This is something we Don't Usually Do when we're just whining about the newest change. Usually we stay here to complain but we make do with the change. This, I think, is the thing that signified people weren't just whining but were actually for real pissed. And then of course...

- Five hours before the roll-back announcement, an article drops. That kind of bad press is the nail in the coffin for a dying company like tumblr. I imagine several concerned meetings somewhere in those five hours.

People get very mad for a few days and then roll over and accept the change to the enclosure. This is what they are betting on. They have had meetings about this.

this is what this post looks on desktop (where the change has gone into effect)

and this is what it looks like on the app where i've disabled updates

this is what it looks like after i added this rb to it

I’m strongly in the boat that feedback should be polite WHILE expressing how critical of a fumble this is. I submitted a piece and explained why. I talked about how their KPIs for comments will probably plummet as it discourages interaction. It’ll bleed user retention due to a hostile new mechanic for user interaction and content creation.

My account is still blocked from searching/tags/etc on my business blog @foundfamilyadventurecrafts so I'm posting this here. There's something very bad happening with Small Business, Tech, and Amazon. What else is new?

Links: Bobo Design Studio for Updates & Submitting Information

Arrows Aim Greenhouse + Chroma Rex are putting together a complaint with WA State Attorney General's Office + Templates for complaints / opt out

Articles:

Amazon's Buy For Me Information Page

Reuters Article

Ars Technica Article