It Was Only A Matter Of Time Before This Happened...

Lego Game of Thrones please!

Daily Discussion: What other movies or franchises would you like to see get the Lego game treatment?

There’s been several Lego Star Wars games, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Harry Potter and more. What movie, comic book or other franchise would you like to see as a Lego game?

Day Seven - The Arts

Of all the subjects so far, this is one of the ones I've looked forward to least. I'm not really a big person for art - I can't draw, I despise dancing in all but a few cases and I'm not in the slightest bit musical, so my interest in the arts is more from a consumer point of view. Seeing as I know next to nothing about painting, the obvious choice is music.

I've grown up listening to quite a wide range of music - from early to late 90's pop music (thanks to local radio and television) to Blues and Rock music (thanks to my father's influence) to Classical music (thanks to my maternal grandfather).

Ever since I was small, the majority of the music that my father would play in the house was Blues and so it was obvious that my tastes would start there, my enjoyment of this genre was cemented by my dad's performances in multiple local bands, appearing in various venues through the south of England and being roadied for (more than a few times) by yours truly.

My interest in pop music tailed off to near nothingness in the late nineties when I began to notice just how similar each song was becoming, I started to see just how corporate pop music had become and how it almost seemed production line based.

I've had a love hate relationship with Classical music since I was young - at first it just felt like lift music - tinny noises in the background that were more to be ignored than admired, but in the following years I've grown to see it as a pure art-form in itself, capable of being just as soothing as modern music and just as rousing and energising as any rock music.

Thanks to a few of my friends, my real passion in music over the last few years has been rock, it seems I found bands like Evanescence, Fightstar, Within Temptation, Paramore, Nightwish and The Foo Fighters (to name but a few) at exactly the right time in my life in order to provide relief and some guidance.

...well that's sort of a potted history of my musical tastes - can't really say I feel like I've done a good job on this one, feels like I've rambled again, but what the hell, right?

Tomorrow you get to watch the fun as I attempt to write a poem... yay

Nik

How do they rise up

May 25th

Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days…

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

It’s like being kicked in the head by a raspberry

Jenna (on mixing raspberry sambuca and apple sours)

Tumblr's reply to the situation with CEO's transphobia is pathetic and you should not be thanking them for doing the bare minimum of saying he's not speaking for them. They fucking thanked that bitch.

The affected trans women are still banned.

A transphobic manchild offered no proper apology. Or stopped. He is also still in his position.

Tumblr is still factually transphobic. Keep pushing.

Philosophy cut to the bone

All right, I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable.

No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meet the rising ape.

Tooth fairies? Hogfathers?

Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

So we can believe the big ones?

Yes. Justice. Duty. Mercy. That sort of thing.

They're not the same at all!

Really? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act, like there was some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged

Yes. But people have got to believe that or what's the point?

My point exactly.

Welp, Tumblr’s dead.

Apparently, the problem with Tumblr isn’t the unchecked festering shitpile of a nazi community that this site brazenly shelters, nor is it the tons of spam bots, nope it’s the adult content, seriously? Would it genuinely be too much work to program in a safe mode that works? Instead, you have to punch your users in the face. Good job @staff you just turned this site into MySpace II, you’ll be able to count your users on one hand in the new year.

Last one out, turn off the light.

A better, more positive Tumblr

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio CEO