vasl-97

"... “I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.

firefox (affectionate)

UBlock Origin obviously. out-the-box works just fine but has a bunch of extra privacy/tracking/spam filters you can enable

Decentraleyes protects you against tracking through "free" curated content delivery and works alongside UBlock (or any of the other common adblocking addons)

I Don't Care About Cookies good for EU users where GDPR made it so every site ever in the universe asks you to accept cookies and privacy terms seventeen times a day. will just auto-accept for you. never see an annoying popup again! but only use in conjunction with...

Cookie Auto Delete does what it says on the tin. will automatically flush cookies, cache, and data when you close a tab. those cookies you just auto accepted? they're gone now. whitelist any sites you wanna stay logged in on and let the rest fucking perish

Don't Track Me Google removes that annoying link conversion when you copy google results. you know when it changes from "site.com" to "encrypted.google.com/randomnonsensefor200charactersblahblahblah"? yeah. this stops that happening. fuck off, google.

Don't Accept image/webp blocks sites from using the most useless file extension known to mankind so you can save as .jpg or .gif as god intended. fuck webp. seriously. what even is that.

Bypass Paywalls Clean exactly what you think it is

HTTPS Everywhere automatically adds ecrypted security to any site that supports https (you can do this manually by adding the s yourself to any url but... who can be fuckin bothere amirite? this does it for you)

New XKit ...duh

Google Search Filter allows you to remove domains from your searches forever. pinterest? gone. weheartit? nuked. also works on duckduckgo. never type "-pinterest" into a search again.

x

[image description: various tiktok comments.

.tatecakes: customer asked for brown bread and i didn't hear them so i said 'you're having sourdough' but forgot to ask it like a question and she just said 'ok.'

brooklynbradshaw21: one time i answered the phone by saying "january, february, march... i'm so sorry, i don't know why i did that, how can i help you" and they hung up.

cailynvol6: one time the phone was ringing but for some reason i hit the intercom button and said "hello?" across the entire store.

eatasslol0: one time i greeted a customer by saying "hello google." it was a bad day.

shaynahicks21: one time a lady told me her last name was "romaine" like the lettuce, so i typed in "lettuce" as her last name... she came back in and laughed at me.

icewater_stan: it's ok i charged someone $100 for a scoop of ice cream once and all he said was "that's a bit expensive."

memebrained comments are also a huge problem on twitter to the point that they're making non-English speaking artists delete their works/private their accounts because the "jokes" don't translate well and the artists feel harassed.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

I joined 10ish years ago (shortly post-Reichenbach, if that dates me) and that time was still solidly in the era of David Karp. Staff communicated but were overall seen as lovingly incompetent. Everyone used Missing E to fix all the problems, and then Xkit when Missing E stopped working, but nobody thought twice about it. We mostly just joked about how often they fiddled with the shade of background blue.

I remember the sale to Yahoo, and how it took a while to notice, but the site kind of just got worse. We got ads, which everyone hated. Changes were passed down from above with little to no fanfare. But staff was still there and making some effort to reach out to users; we got some of the best April Fools jokes in that era, like Coppy and Decision 2016 that showed that someone in there knew what users liked. Features like direct messaging and rebloggable asks and stacked posts were still coming through, even if the communication with users was opaque. Bots invaded every inch of the site. And then we got the porn ban, which snapped the site like a twig.

After Verizon bought tumblr, there were a few years where staff almost seemed to vanish, or did their best to hide what they were doing. I can't even remember the last few years of April Fools jokes, if they happened at all. Ads got bigger. Changes just happened and there was no way to tell if it was intentional or glitches. If they were intentional, they seemed almost malicious. Users started talking about shadowbans and tags getting wiped out and some posts not showing up in tags or searches and user deletions happening behind the scenes. Bots got worse and worse and less was done about them. If anything went wrong, there was no confidence that reaching out to support would do a thing. Staff was spoken about in posts with the same tone as Bezos or Google, just another tech giant slowly making our lives worse for the sake of squeezing another buck out of us and then selling us to the highest bidder. If nothing else, we could be proud of squeezing the resale value out of the site for them.

I don't know exactly what happened over the last year, if it was because of the sale to Automattic or other internal changes. But all of a sudden, staff started talking to us again. And we didn't fuckin trust em an inch, and rightly so. Changes got rolled out again, and we started complaining again, because we may have no power to make any web experience better so the least we can do is go down complaining.

But the things they started changing were... stuff we wanted? We got tag viewers, timestamps, dash customization, filtering that actually worked. Most new features get toggles so you can turn it off if you don't want it. Huh, we thought, that doesn't seem right. Ideas flopped like Post+, and god did we complain. But after we did... the features... changed? Staff started testing out the ideas that the users endorsed? Like tipping posts on a per-post basis to avoid copyright issues with fanworks and an ad-free subscription model? Huh, we said.

And the final nail in the coffin was that new iOS tag-copying "feature" that we all complained about to no end... that was actually a glitch. Not some coder's whim that got passed down and we just had to deal with it forever. Sorry, staff said, we'll get that fixed right away.

Huh, we said. Huh.

Aside from being an unexpected change for tumblr, it's making me realize how weird it feels in the internet as a whole to have some transparency and communication between site developers and the userbase. When I joined tumblr, forum culture and the heyday of the early creator-run internet were fresh memories. Staff who posted like users were common, and popular demand was the actual goal of web design. But now there is no social media where the developers speak directly to the users and incorporate real feedback into the changes they make. Algorithms drive everything, moderation happens silently, and it's impossible to tell what a human has laid eyes on. Decisions are made based on what can get the most eyes on sponsored ads and drive clicks. Social media is now Big Tech, driven by Big Money Decisions and ad space.

If you’re feeling discouraged about your progress in Japanese, look at this chart and remember that it’s okay to not have things “click” right away. It’s okay to say “dang this is hard” (because it is!) but even more important to say “I don’t get it right now” rather than “I’ll never get this.” Give your brain a bit of slack and be patient with yourself. Your brain needs to form new neural pathways for Japanese that your mother tongue has had for years and years. When that “aha!” moment comes - and it will - take the time to appreciate how far you’ve come in your understanding! What you now get used to be something unknown to you.

You’re taking the time to acquire a new skill, and every new thing you learn brings you closer to your goals. Learning a new language is certainly infuriating sometimes, but all your hard work will pay off when you can understand and communicate with native speakers. After all, aren’t we learning a new language to be able to communicate?

Every little acorn of new information you learn will be something you can carry as you move forward, one step at a time. 😊💮

and I think about my apartment, a duplex from 1912, surely built for a middle- or working-class family. spartan, really; quite basic and no-frills. not much to look at from the outside. just like a thousand buildings of similar provenance in the Boston area.

there are flowers molded in the chunky, cast-iron radiators

there’s a design of concentric circles in the carved door-lintels

many buildings of this type have a little stained-glass window somewhere

 I think about ornate door hinges in the staff wing of a country estate from 1878.  think of patterned wallpaper in a mansion’s kitchen, from 1797. I think about purely functional spaces someone looked at and said, “this needs beauty”

Instead of, you know, functioning entirely as a) a healer, b) a distraction, and most importantly c) a hobbit delivery system.  

Hobbits brought down Sauron AND Saruman, thwarted Denethor’s insanity, stopped the Witch King of Angmar, thwarted Saruman again, and REBUILT AFTER THE WAR. And they did it all with, I swear to God, the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. 

Bilbo befriends Gandalf and a bunch of cranky dwarves, intervenes repeatedly to try to prevent dragon attacks, murder and war, and then just WANDERS HOME WITH THE RING.

Bilbo’s POWER OF FRIENDSHIP allows him to actually leave the Ring, something nobody’s ever done before.

Frodo and his friends set off to take the Ring to Elrond, make friends with the local reclusive demigod and survive purely thanks to THAT FRIENDSHIP. 

The hobbits unite the Nine Walkers with FRIENDSHIP. 

Merry and Pippin befriend the reclusive tree people, GOODBYE SARUMAN. 

Frodo trots across the world befriending people and gets them all the way to the fiery mountain, when Sam’s friendship GETS THEM THE REST OF THE WAY. 

Meanwhile, Pippin makes friends in Minas Tirith and SAVES THE DAY AGAIN. 

Merry befriends Eowyn and inspires ‘Dernhelm’ to just suit up and go like he does and distracts the Witch King at the crucial moment DAY SAVED THANK YOU. 

Then when they think it’s all over, they amble back to the Shire, find it in trouble, and CALL ON THEIR FRIENDS TO FUCKING CARE BEAR STARE SARUMAN OUT OF TOWN. 

Our system is broken.  It is cruel.  It is dehumanizing, degrading, and it’s vile nature is so, so unnecessary.

We need universal healthcare today in America.  We needed it 40 years ago.  It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more efficient, it’s more effective and it is so, so, so much less cruel than what we have.

Additional sources/references:

Universal Healthcare Cost in America would be cheaper by trillions of dollars

The US has worse life expectancies than socialized healthcare countries

We have worse generalized healthcare results

We have the most expensive care

Our system is so cruel and unique that doctors from other countries literally can’t believe what happens here

I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this.  There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways.  I can tell you when, though.

🪴 gildatheplant Follow

Literally just making it any solid color would've been better guys.

🚛 mintymaiden Follow

I'd like to point out that the rainbow has more positive than negative meanings.

🏞 ichigo-hiyoko Follow

im sorry but this reply absolutely killed me the rainbow can mean whatever the heck you want it to mean, that is never going to change that this straight up looks like they DRAGGED BLOODY BODIES ACROSS THE FUCKING FLOOR 😂

🎱 youthful-pills Follow

Hi fun fact, colors do have meaning and there is a legit thing called color theory. The rainbow does have more positive connotations than negative like the @ mintymaiden said. For example, violet is associated with more money, wisdom, and elegance than with blood and death just like the chart shows you. Also, check out "The Designer's Dictionary of Color" by Shaune Addams. Have fun learning something

Xoxo

-Designer

🏵 diasporanpapi Follow

i think y'all are missing the point here.

🌈 forlovefromfear Follow

You can theorize to Thrashthrust and back but that doesn't change my immediate reaction which is that someone is literally dragging corpses around

📓 jhenne-bean Follow

I like that the presumption here is that "No One On Grumblr Has Heard of Color Theory. Let Me Explain in Depth" rather than simply acknowledging that the VISUAL EFFECTS of this particular color choice, applied in the manner it was, can still amount to "this is a hospital and that looks like blood"

like, color theory doesn't exist in a vacuum. If your design of choice for Hemospectrum Paint is asymmetric splatters and splotches against the wall, or in this case, a shellbeast trail on the hallway's floor, and infographic won't override the viewers' instinct

🏙 eternal-dannation Follow

When I was a kid, “barbie.com” looked like this

But now, if you type “Barbie.com” you’re taken immediately to Mattel’s online shop, surrounded by nothing but “shop now” links and toy collections.

Disney channel’s website is now “Disneynow.com” which still has games and shows appropriate for kids, but is aimed towards a younger audience as it combines Disney Jr and Disney Channel properties, and the look of the entire site is very juvenile and not very appealing to kids in the tween and young teen demographics.

Nick.com has been similarly streamlined and is focused primarily on streaming its shows, and the only games still left are 10 apps that can’t be played on browser.

Kid-friendly sites like icarly.com, Poptropica, Club Penguin, Neopets, Webkinz etc used to be insanely relevant and popular spaces built for kids and tweens.

Now, kids are being funneled into less moderated, more exploitative, and more public spaces like Roblox (its dangerous and exploitative nature exposed in these videos from People Make Games: (x) (x)), Fortnite (known for its gambling and microtransaction issues), and social media sites like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter.

My elementary aged cousins spend their time on Roblox, YouTube, and some less than reputable game sites that are full of ads and stolen/reposted/reskinned games. My sister was on Musically/Tiktok and Twitter in middle school. They don’t have the same options for having fun online that I did when I was a kid, especially not when they get too old for nickjr and disneynow.