where I grew up in California not only is “dude” generally non-gender-specific, half of the time it doesn’t even refer to a person at all.
I said it to a faucet today.
I use it to curse the weather.
I pretty much have used it as every part of a sentence at some point today.
I use ‘dude’ indiscriminately for all genders, species, and inanimate appliances.
(Source: sailing-your-ships)
Tumblr, I have an idea. You’re desperate to monetize this site. I get that. Running websites costs money, I know how the world works.
I am desperate for you to create a website I can use effectively.
I was on livejournal back in the day, and they had a thing called “paid accounts.” The free account was always free, but the paid accounts had special benefits.
If you offered paid accounts, I would buy one. I would give them away for giveaways. I would give them to my friends as gifts. I had a paid account back in my LJ days!
I think 25-30 dollars a year is fair for the amount of entertainment I get off this site, considering that tumblr, inc, does not make the content but serves as a vessel. That works out to 2.50 a month at the high end, which is more money than you are making off me currently because I use an ad blocker because we are at war. (Previous to you taking replies away, I actually didn’t! Because again, I understand how costs and money work) But also low enough that I think you’d be surprised how many takers you’d get.
Let’s stop fucking with each other and just turn this into a monetary exchange. I’m tired of the horseshit. You need money, I need a fucking useable fandom website. Leave free tumblr accounts as they are, I don’t care. But here’s what I want in a paid account.
NECESSARY:
- I want replies back. No ‘we’ll get around to it’ no ‘replies are coming.’ I want them back the day you run my Paypal. You have the code, don’t even tell me you can’t turn it on for a particular blog, because you did the exact thing with messaging.
- I want to be able to upload videos direct to tumblr that are longer than 6 damn seconds. Give me some storage space.
- Custom themes or some bullshit, I don’t actually care about this but other people might
- No ads for paid users
I would LIKE:
- To create a button where I can decide to make a post rebloggable or not when I create it.
- To have a quick dropdown when I ask a question so I can ask it from a sideblog.
- Fanmail back
Now, I am not a great fool, and realize there will be GREAT HUE AND CRY if you try to establish this. I don’t care. And you shouldn’t either. First of all, there’s great hue and cry every time you do literally anything. Secondly, the people who will complain the loudest are very likely already using an adblocker, because we are on the internet and savvy to it, and you are not making money on them anyhow.
And please don’t insult me, tumblr, by telling me it’s about ‘the love of the site’ or some crap. The changes you’ve implemented are designed to make this more of a look-reblog-move on site where things go viral and advertising can easily be slipped in, versus a conversational place. But I am telling you, ‘I will give you money to stop fucking with me’
Let me give you money. And stop fucking with me.
@staff. Cash for services. We’ll both be happy.
In the optimistic event that someone actually takes a look, here’s my list.
As a paying user I would NEED:
- Replies back. Actual replies. At minimum, exactly like they were. I would happily accept them larger though, say the size of a question reply box or an Ask.
- A Tumblr-side blacklist tied to my account that filters on the server end so the content I don’t want to see never hits my dash. That blacklist filters on mobile as well.
- Better communication about things happening on the development side. By which I mean any communication at all.
- No ads for paid users.
As a paying user I would LIKE:
- An increase in post limits.
- Post-level control over what is or isn’t rebloggable.
- Some quality of life improvements offered by Xkit (like say tag bundles), if only because there’s no reason they don’t already exist I mean come on.
- An easy way to export/back-up posts. JUST IN CASE SOMETHING MAY HAPPEN TO SOMEONE’S BLOG AT SOME POINT PERHAPS I DUNNO.
- A way to organize the Ask Box, my god, please.
I’m not hard to please, I’m really not. You want money, I want to stay here. I fail to believe there’s not some way to make both our dreams come true.
I agree with all of the above, and would gladly pay for a membership if these features were available to users. Please start just asking for our money instead of sabotaging the social media aspects of your social media network to try and sell my content to advertisers.
Agreed. I’d be one of the first to hand over my dough. HOWEVER - my paid site should work on my phone and tablet too. I shouldn’t have to pay more than once.
One of the first purchases I ever made with my shiny new debit card was to upgrade my LJ account. It was worth every penny.
I am 100% in agreement on all of these points.
@staff are you listening? Have credit card. Will pay for actual proper functionality.
Planned Parenthood is giving out FREE water filters to Flint residents.
The crisis is causing elevated levels of lead in children. It is not safe for ANYONE to drink.
Once again, Planned Parenthood comes through for community health.
(Source: problematicfeminist, via kinshula)
They will grow up completely untrusting with a general sense of sadness and guilt.
Manipulation includes:
- “I just wish [something passive aggressive involving your child]”
- “You do whatever you want to do.” and then getting mad when they make the “wrong” choice
- Not believing them when they tell you something someone did or said to them, including their friends, your friends, family members, or even you
- Doing something shitty and then pretending you didn’t in hopes they’ll forget?
- Getting upset when they open up to you. About anything. Even if it’s something angering or disappointing. Don’t show them it’s dangerous or counterproductive to talk to you.
- Making them feel bad for the friends/significant others they choose, career path (or lack thereof), school choice (or lack thereof), gender/sexuality (or lack thereof) literally anything that either they didn’t choose or that they would be miserable without
- Do NOT EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES pressure them to talk to you about personal things.
- Kids do not owe their parents anything. They did not choose to be born. You chose to get pregnant/chose to carry to term/chose to raise a baby (even if you didn’t choose all of these things, you at least chose one) under the assumption that you would love this child no matter what.
(Source: pine-tease, via dyinghistoric)
the tru problematic babe of the new generation
YAS
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
If bees become extinct we will have exactly 4 YEARS to live on this planet. I don’t understand how “not giving a fuck” is more important than your life…
okay, I have a thing to say about this. I’m no expert on bees, but I am a biologist (and entomologist) so I think there is something I can contribute that’ll be of worth.
I agree entirely with the sentiment that we must protect honeybees. Obviously they are massively important for biodiversity, as well as pollinating food crops for humans. There is no doubt that if all the honeybees in the world were to vanish in a day that the consequences would be dire.
However, I disagree that the main cause for concern regarding honeybee death is the use of Genetically Modified (GM) crops. I’d be very interested to read a research paper that says ‘GM crops have killed millions of honeybees’, if indeed such a paper exists because in all honesty I find it highly unlikely that this is a true statement.
Let’s start with some facts about GM crops:
1. The development of GM crops is a highly regulated process, bound by strict country-specific legislature. A great number of trials are carried out long before commercial planting of a GM crop is even considered. It is these trials, and accompanying laboratory studies, that ensure a GM crop is safe to non-target organisms (such as honeybees) by investigating direct and indirect effects (Nap et al. 2003).
2. Crops that are genetically modified to express insecticidal proteins (for crop pest control) have a high level of specificity. This means that the insecticidal proteins being produced by the GM plant will only affect a narrow range of insect groups because of the chemical properties of the protein. For example, GM crops expressing insecticidal proteins sourced from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) will only target some Lepidopteran pests (caterpillars; Romeis et al. 2006). Furthermore, a recent meta-analysis of the literature found that GM Bt crops do not negatively affect the survival of adult honeybees or their larvae (Duan et al. 2008).
3. GM crops can be tailored such that the novel gene is expressed only in particular parts of the plant. For example, GM Bt rice plants express the toxin in the stems but not the grains (Datta et al. 1998). This technique means that gene expression can be excluded from the flowers/pollen of the crop plant, so that bees and other pollinators would not be affected. Neat, huh?
So those are a token few reasons why GM crops are safer than perhaps many people believe (as the result of a lot of questionable, non-scientific articles). To come back to our main point about honeybee death, I would like to briefly mention a few alternative explanations for the recent decline in honeybee populations. These are as follows:
1. Many bees have died as the result of broad-spectrum insecticide use. These are pesticides that lack specificity, and can be harmful to non-target organisms. Neonicotinoids are a well-studied example of this (Decourtye & Devillers, 2010). Not to worry, though, because many broad-spectrum pesticides including neonics are well on their way out. Indeed, the EU recently banned a large cohort of neonic pesticides. This is still a topic of controversy, mind (Goulson, 2013).
2. Many bees have died as the result of Varroa mite infestation. Imagine you’ve been bitten by several ticks, except those ticks are the size of dinner plates. That gives you an idea of the severity of a Varroa mite infestation on a single developing bee. The parasitisation of bees by Varroa mites and other parasites is often accompanied by disease transmission. This can result in colonies dying within two years after infestation (Johnson, 2011).
3. Many bees have died as the result of ‘colony collapse disorder’. This is a phrase that has popped up a lot recently, and is basically an umbrella term for the various causes of bee death including parasite infestation, disease transmission, environmental stresses, and management stresses such as poor nutrition (Johnson, 2011). Colony collapse has been attributed to broad-spectrum pesticide use in some instances. However, it is has still been observed in countries where broad-spectrum pesticides have been withdrawn (in the EU, like I mentioned earlier; Johnson, 2011).
So those are my main points. Please excuse the bullet-point nature of this; I was trying to keep it fairly short. Not sure I managed that haha. But anyway, my take-home message is that GM crops are not the enemy when it comes to honeybee decline. If anything, bees are at much greater danger from the use of broad-spectrum pesticides and from parasites and diseases. Using GM can even help to alleviate some of the problems associated with broad-spectrum pesticides, as they greatly reduce the need to apply such chemicals (Romeis et al. 2006).
A finishing note: Do your homework. Go on google scholar and read some of the literature, making sure it is recent (within the past 10-15 years). Literature reviews are a great way to find out what the consensus is on any given topic. Don’t use popular media as your main source of information where science is concerned; they tend to favour scandal and exaggeration. You want to know what’s really going on? Check out some research articles and see for yourself.
Thanks for sticking it through to the end of this impromptu mini-essay! —Alice
References:
Datta, K., Vasquez, A., Tu, J., Torrizo, L., Alam, M. F., Oliva, N., Abrigo, E., Khush, G. S., & Datta, S. K. (1998). Constitutive and tissue-specific differential expression of the cryIA (b) gene in transgenic rice plants conferring resistance to rice insect pest. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 97(1-2), 20-30.
Decourtye, A., & Devillers, J. (2010). Ecotoxicity of neonicotinoid insecticides to bees. In Insect nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (pp. 85-95). Springer New York.
Duan, J. J., Marvier, M., Huesing, J., Dively, G., & Huang, Z. Y. (2008). A meta-analysis of effects of Bt crops on honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae). PLoS One, 3(1), e1415.
Goulson, D. (2013). Neonicotinoids and bees: What’s all the buzz?. Significance, 10(3), 6-11.
Johnson, R. (2011). Honey bee colony collapse disorder. DIANE Publishing.
Nap, J. P., Metz, P. L., Escaler, M., & Conner, A. J. (2003). The release of genetically modified crops into the environment. The Plant Journal, 33(1), 1-18.
Romeis, J., Meissle, M., & Bigler, F. (2006). Transgenic crops expressing Bacillus thuringiensis toxins and biological control. Nature biotechnology, 24(1), 63-71.
This commentary is SO important. Succinct and with proper sourcing; beautiful.
It infuriates me when people blame GMO for everything without actually examining the evidence.
*AGGRESSIVELY HIGHLIGHTS THIS ENTIRE POST*
(Source: antinwo, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
I am currently in the process of porting a lot of my older fanfic onto AO3, because I want it all in one place/don’t want it to be lost/want to revise it to be a little more in-line with my current standards of both quality and language use. It’s so quick and easy! I can’t remember why I didn’t do this before!
…oh, right, she says, as the hit counter goes higher without the comments, or even the kudos, to match. Because I feel like I’m screaming into the void.
I come from very comment-heavy fic environments, and like most fanfic authors I have known, I am a little twitchy about “what if this is awful what if I am awful what if nobody likes my shit at all.” So when I have 50 hits and one kudo, I actually feel pretty rotten, which makes me less eager to do the job of cleaning and posting.
This is hence a plea on behalf of all fanfic authors: remember that the people who write the stories you enjoy are not getting paid for their time in anything other than “you did good, have a cookie” comments from people. Please consider commenting if you liked a story. Please consider leaving a kudo if you read all the way to the end. There are stories that are qualitatively bad that I’ve left kudos on, because hey, I read them, they gave me an hour of enjoyment, they deserve a cookie.
We have infinite cookies to give. We should share them freely, because wow, does it suck when fanfic makes fanfic writers sad.
That’s all.
This feels particularly relevant to a lot of chatter I’m seeing cross my dash.
Writing is hard. Writing is scary. Writing takes time and effort and care and love love love. Which is true of any fanwork of course, but fanfiction also requires a significant investment from its audience before it can even begin to be seen. With art or gifsets or any other visual medium, the work can be consumed, appreciated, and commented/reblogged/whatever within seconds. It takes longer than that just to read the description on a work of fanfiction.
But in the same vein, your fanfic writers give you hours of entertainment in return. Whether it’s a smile or a sob delivered in ten minute ficlets or 100k monsters you’re still reading at 3 am, fanfiction will give you a level of immersion unique to the fandom experience. With fanfiction, the characters live forever and the story never ends.
Still, that commitment from the audience means we’re already looking at a sliver of the same attention, without hope of the same scale of interaction and response. That makes what we DO get so very critical.
If you read something, take a moment to click those kudos or likes or whatever. If you liked it, leave a comment, If you loved it, love your fanfic author back and tell them. TELL THEM EVERYTHING I PROMISE YOU WE WANT TO HEAR
Remember that the only thing that nourishes fandom creators are your responses. Your fanfic writers are timid, starving creatures. Feed them. Love them. I said the characters live forever and the story never ends, but that’s only true if the storytellers keep telling stories. To do that, they need an audience. Make sure they know they have one.
Think of your fan creators as skittish, timid forest creatures. If you speak in a kind voice and leave scraps of food around, chances are, they’ll keep visiting the yard of your fandom. Yell at them, ignore them, or make your fandom yard an unpleasant place to be, and they disappear, leaving you wondering why your yard is so empty and boring.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
Anonymous asked: (same movie anon) it's basically this guy accidentally a guy and so he and his wife go on the run (with oscar's character helping them) and like shady shit is revealed and there's some PLOT TWISTS that I need to talk to someone about. it's on Netflix too :)
o.O I am SO VERY interested, I will definitely watch it. And then I will almost certainly have a need to talk to someone about it too, so sit tight.
I TRIED TO SCROLL PAST THIS AND I COULDNT
Every single one of you. You’re all precious.
Last time I reblogged one of these things I was at 180. I reached 300 today. That means three hundred real people follow my blog. Wow.
i love all my babies
(via dyinghistoric)
ok so like. obviously the whole scene with finn and poe on the tie fighter is one of the most important things of our time, but what I especially love about it is their mutual giddy enthusiasm? like, I guess just because finn had just finished being an evil storm trooper and poe had shown himself to be a smartass I was expecting some like, growly banter and gruff dislike-but-I’ll-work-with-you dynamic, but instead they’re both just sunshine and puppies right off the bat. poe gives finn his name and finn is like “I love it :DDDD” and poe is like “I love you :DDDD” and when finn makes the shot and flips out about it poe doesn’t mock him for being excited he’s just like “YEAH WHOO THAT WAS AWESOME!!” and then they tell each other they’re both awesome and laugh a lot and it’s all smiles and giddiness and a romcom escape from the First Order and I just. they’re both so happy to meet each other and IT KILLS ME.
i’m such a sucker for this thing where people meet and are immediately like oh, finally, thank god, it’s YOU.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
Vodka Tia Moran
