Wow

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.

Wow

icarus laughed as he fell

Genius.

:-)

I want to always be like the guy who joined in on the joke. how delightful all around.

I've only ever seen this in screenshots before..n

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

Wait, beneath the sea floor?

OUGHGH??

OIUOHGHHVOIH!!!!!

I loved when Seth Myers went on his little "I've been calling them weird for years" rant (and he has). I was sad when after the first assassination attempt and the conventions the "weirdness" died out of the conversation. They ARE weird.

I am an autist who has been "weird" all my life (according to others and so myself), and who has proudly claimed "weird" as an okay state to be. I think how "weird" they are should be in the conversation.

Trump's folk are more than two standard deviations from the mean. For example, most of Trump's picks are billionaires. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, no one thinks "the average person" is a billionaire.

I know we expect politicians and public servants in highly placed elected positions to be more wealthy than the people we know. Many of us know someone who is a public servant, some of us might know some local and localish politicians socially, and others might know people whose personal assets exceed $30M, but that's not the same with billionaires. 95+% of us can never expect to meet a billionaire outside of a concert or special event.

According to Wikipedia, the 2024 Forbes list, there are 2,781 billionaires in the world. A small town is generally defined as a population center with less than 10,000 people. You would need almost 4 times the total world population of billionaires to fill one small town, they aren't real common. The current world population is 8,194,270,656 as of Wednesday, December 18, 2024 according to the most recent United Nations estimates via Worldometer.

A cabinet with 8 billionaires is not normal, it's "weird". A political party who has openly discussed how they're going to exploit being in government to make themselves more money, is "weird" (in a really bad way).

So excellent choice of political word of the year.

1 word

I gotta know, "WHAT’S YOUR POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR?" WEIRD This word entered the headlines in July and became a “brat”-like summer phenomenon. #politics #news #culture #social

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.

Reblog if you think asexuality is a legitimate sexuality.

I'm trying to prove something.