Not Quite The Same, But Check Out The Days Ordering On This Weekly Planner Fridge Magnet That My Housemate

just wanted to share the National Down Syndrome Society’s message for this year’s World Down Syndrome Day (21st March) 💛💙

i love in fantasy when its like “king galamir the mighty golden eagle and his most trusted advisor who would never betray him, gruelworm bloodeye the treacherous”

As a queer, computer geek and roleplaying nerd, I object to your use of the "nerd" descriptor to discuss anti-LGBTIQ+ bigots.

I hope you take this in good humour. I approve of your sentiment. I also hope you think about not using "nerds" when "bigots" is more accurate and has much less splash damage.

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

These books are great and I can't recommend them highly enough!

Humans Are Weird: Bungee Jumping

I've talked a lot about adrenaline junkies but is there anything we won't do to get that thrill? The aliens are wondering the same thing...

Alien *shaking head*: so you jump out of aircrafts with thin fabrics...and now you are telling me you find great heights to leap from?

Human: yeah. we just use an elastic cord to yank us back up before we get hurt.

Alien *slow blinks*: so falling to your death is not enough? you must get...closer.

Human: yeah. there's something about watching the ground just come up at you and you can get way closer when bungee jumping.

Alien: ...because getting closer to death is...good?

Human *grins*: we love to cheat death.

Alien *slowly backing away*: I fear what that means for your kind.

If you like this scene and want to see more of them, check out my full-length projects pinned on my page! All are available FREE in KU!

You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

Hey, married women: Go apply for your passport.

The SAVE Act has passed in The House. It makes it illegal for a woman whose last name does not match her birth name to vote as a "citizenship verification measure." The main way around it is being able to present your passport at the polls since that proves your citizenship.

Look up your Senators here and raise hell on their phone lines about this blatant attempt to disenfranchise millions of women:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

English class is excellent, but it needs to be more than just English class.

We need open ended research questions to teach folk how to formulate questions, interrogate data, state assumptions and test those assumptions. For example, using a data set of Senate votes, you can teach how voting works and how votes are counted (Civics), how two party preferred is calculated (Civics and Maths) and get students to write code (Tech) to process the data in various ways. Then use their findings (English) to support an argument (for example living a side on FPTP versus PV).

Science classes often cover pseudo science, but they should also cover how to analyse your test results, and what to do when your test results don't match the results you anticipated.

Religious education classes (where they exist) often cover cults, but everyone needs to be taught about how to identify cult-like indoctrination. It should be part of Health (or equivalent).

We need classes on relationships (not just sex ed), such as the importance of self respect, respecting the others, what healthy relationships look like (including friendships), what red flags to watch out for, what to do when you don't feel safe.

"they should teach media literacy in schools" english class "they should teach students how to spot misinformation" it's english class "they should teach kids critical thinking" it's called english class

Stay safe in the water

As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.