PLEASE DO NOT THINK FOR EVEN A SECOND THAT YOUR VOICE WILL NOT HAVE AN IMPACT THIS IS LITERALLY THE BARE

discourse in other fandoms: lgbtphobia or racism, ships, etc

discourse in stardew valley fandom: if you can fish without mods fuck you

I’ve been working on being more conscious of how I write emails, and made this handy printable guide! I have a bad habit of overusing exclamation points, emojis, and qualifiers like “just” and “possibly” to sound extra-friendly and non-threatening in emails. (“Just wondering / just confirming / just checking / just making sure / just wanted to let you know”) You are allowed to take up space. Your voice deserves to be heard. Your opinions matter. You don’t need to apologize for existing or asking for what you need. You are not “bossy” or “bitchy” for not sounding like a pep-machine 24/7. If you act like a doormat, you better develop a taste for shoe leather. You have power too. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself— no one else is gonna do it for you.

hey! since we’re very close to pride month, friendly reminder to use cishet instead of straight! let’s not forget about straight trans people!

love reading about the Great Rapprochement. Arthur spends 1895 to 1915 metaphorically kneeling on the ground going pspspspsps in Alfred’s general direction mostly getting ignored but occasionally getting an increasingly half-hearted “go fuck yourself” in response. it’s fantastic. look at this.

German Ambassador Bernstoff, a shrewd observer, reported in 1911, “The British efforts [to cultivate America] are meeting with a certain return of platonic affection. The old rooted dislike to England is gradually vanishing… But it is not accompanied by any wish to offer anything in return.” In hard diplomatic coin, the Americans took but they did not give. British ministries from Salisbury to Asquith made important concessions of substance and form to the United States. These statesmen gained not alliance nor even true reciprocity, but the elimination of grounds of conflict, occasional and essentially “platonic” or negative support in world politics, and above all a transformation of American attitudes which would pay immense dividends after 1914. While other factors propelled America in the same direction, British policy from 1895 to 1914 was the indispensable element.

I love it. Arthur hasn’t been this nice to Alfred since 1754 and Alfred is completely weirded out and has absolutely no idea what to do with this. so he just keeps being belligerent and Arthur just keeps being nice until eventually Alfred is sitting at a table in Arthur’s garden wondering how the fuck he came to the point where he’s having literal tea parties with the old fucker. 

meanwhile Matthew, Jack, and Eliza are just as weirded out. maybe Matthew less so than Jack and Eliza but like. it’s still really fucking weird when Alfred says things that would get Jack sent to boot camp in the most remote part of the Canadian wilderness and Arthur just smiles. Duncan, Morgan, and Erin are much less surprised, since obviously they remember how much Arthur loved Alfred as a child. on the whole, Duncan thinks it’s funny, Morgan is relieved and pleased, and Erin is utterly disgusted lol. like c’mon, Al, don’t listen to him. he’s so full of shit you know he’s full of shit. 

alas, the end of WW1 proves Erin right and Alfred goes right back to belligerent and aloof (though perhaps not near as much as pre-1895).

I think we’re down to three days now, and Governor Stitt has been refusing to meet with Julius’s family

"Parking Lot Pimpin| On the Wrongful Conviction of Julius Jones This Friday we get into the wrongful conviction of Julius Jones, a Black man who has been on death row in Oklahoma for 19 years for a 1999 murder that he’s always denied taking part in. Julius will be wrongfully be put to death in SIX DAYS if we don’t take action now. 🚨 Reach out to the Governor’s office at 405-521-2342 and urge Governor Stitt to stand by the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julius Jones clemency. Time is of the essence. What you can say or speak from the heart: I would like to urge Governor Stitt to stand by his own word to follow the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julis Jones clemency. Please save Julius from wrongful execution. RT @so.informed - Let’s also discuss how the judge is literally messing over the Kyle Ritttendon trial. His overly chatty disposition can lead directly to an appeal if Kyle is in fact found Guilty." - @lyneezy

TAKE ACTION NOW:

➡️ Call the Oklahoma City Governor’s office at 405-521-2342 and urge Governor Stitt to stand by the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julius Jones clemency

➡️ Sign this petition Justice for Julius petition

➡️ Complete this form to send an e-letter to the Pardon & Parole Board.

My class pretended to play dead.

IT'S DONE, its finished.

i genuinely can't get over teen! dad bruce wayne so please consider the following:

18 year old bruce wayne deciding to foster 2 year old dick grayson after seeing the fateful circus incident.

(according to new jersey law people from the age of 18 and up can be foster parents with no further age restrictions)

he does most of his training carrying dick around and dick spends the entire time just monologuing about dora the explorer while bruce is like "that's nice"

(after a few months he gets totally into it he's like: "oh jeesh, i can believe swiper did that, how horrible of him, you did tell him no swiping right?")

alfred initially is like "ah master bruce, decided to sign up for teen mom season 4 have we?" but two weeks in he's dressing dick up in 'i love my butler grandpa' t-shirts and is already favouring him over bruce.

bruce at first just tells dick "i'm going to try and be a big brother to you, etc etc" but dick understands like 60% of what he just said and is calling him "dad" within 3 months.

he still goes to train with the league and has to justify to ra's al ghul why every 10 minutes he has to use the satellite phone to talk to a toddler about the plot developments of blue's clues.

him becoming batman is just increasingly harder because he has to spend an hour trying to convince dick that "no the guy in the weird suit is also me- i'm the guy in the weird suit"

by the time dick is like 3, bruce has found him hanging from a chandelier at least four times and he still doesn't know how dick managed to get up there.

bruce just hanging out with dick and being like "yeah this little dude is my best friend and what about it?"

when dick eventually gets older and is like "i wanna be a superhero and fight crime" bruce is like "you don't wanna be associated with those dweebs, go be a ballerina or something"

(clarks first reaction upon meeting dick and realising that oh wait isn't bruce like, 24? and this kid is like 8? is "that must've been quite a shock for your parents" and he immediately flings himself into the sun.)

@staff @support

An Open Letter to Tumblr about the Adult Content Ban and How it is Hurting Your Users:

Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more. 

You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again. 

We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue. 

 Multiple other social networking websites, such as Wordpress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole.  There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough. 

You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:

Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind. 

We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems - particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile - only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography - but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.

 If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to. 

You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.

If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise. 

Sincerely, 

The users of your website. 

@staff @support