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the moon is a beautiful trans woman and it’s so fucked up that people put an american flag in her. she wouldn’t want that. take it out.

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reblog for something t4t to happen to you this summer.

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Day 2 of Drawing Pride Flags as Foxes: Lesbian Pride Flag

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Day 5 of Drawing Pride Flags as Foxes: Trans Pride Flag

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My partner's friend's little sister is a therian, and whenever their friend has had a concern or question, they've come to me, which I deeply appreciate. I don't really know much about this kid other than she's a wolf and a tween and she's been brave enough to tell her whole family about therianthropy.

Today, at the local pride parade, there were a couple therian kids (I assume, with the masks and tails) running around, and I got to thinking about the little sister. Turns out her parents are considering enrolling her in a special ed class at a Waldorf school, where about half the students are therians and the teachers are supportive of therianthropy.

We live in a time where there are therian classrooms with supportive teachers. I broke down crying in the middle of the parade when my partner told me. Fuck dude, I'm tearing up all over again writing this. There are therian kids growing up right now, being open about their therianthropy and meeting support and acceptance from teachers and peers and parents and siblings, and being in a class surrounded by half a dozen other therians of their own age.

I never could've even imagined something like this when I was a 13 year old baby therian.

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The American people overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s plan. In fact, a recent poll found that only 14% of voters support cutting social services to fund an extension of Trump’s tax cuts. That’s why Republicans passed the bill early in the morning when no one was watching — because they know how wildly unpopular it is. This bill is NOT a done deal. It still needs to pass the Senate. It's important that we get in touch with our senators and tell them to vote NO on this bill. Keep calling. (202) 224-3121

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i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates and besides, AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

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Being a committed pedestrian in a major city will make you hyperaware of the ways urban areas will attempt to make themselves hostile to homeless people and the ways that these efforts also make life worse for everyone else. The needlessly narrow sidewalks, the uncomfortable and inconvenient seats at bus and train stops, the noise pollution from convenience stores piping loud music outside. It all sucks, it all has a negative impact on everyone simply trying to exist within a community, and it’s all in service of cruelly trying to drive a class of people from public view.

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sea kitty🎣

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I miss swimming, but whenever I consider doing it dysphoria creeps in.

It's rude

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Reblog to heal the heart of the person you reblogged this from.

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everyone who thinks "social pressure to transition" is real has naturalised the social pressure Not to transition to such a point that they have become incapable of understanding that it's real and exists. "cis guy who likes wearing a skirt has been pressured into becoming trans :(" how about "trans girl who is in the middle of cracking her egg is terrified of being trans and you telling her that it's Okay to be a cis man in a skirt is unhelpful at best and open transmisogyny at worst". you do not see that 99.99% of the social pressure is in the direction of Staying Cis because it is only that 0.01% that feels unnatural to you

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Since tumblr still hasn’t unblurred me, I’m going to take some time to tell you about one of their most secret policies:

Tumblr bans specific images. This is not a flagging thing. The image doesn’t get flagged. It gets removed from the site permanently. And I mean PERMANENTLY. There is no notification that this happens to your image because the policy is completely unofficial. There are also absolutely no guidelines to it. For instance, an image like this one is not against any tumblr community guidelines.

Yet this image when I had if as my header for my blog, to protest my previous blog’s sudden and uncalled for deletion (I had zero flagged posts, was given no warnings, and then one day I checked at two of my blogs were missing and I had a stern email from tumblr to never make a nsft blog again or else all my blogs would get deleted…yes the email said that) was removed. Not only was it removed form the posts I had made using it. They removed it from my header.

Of course, as you can see the image in no way violates the community guidelines…and even if it did, technically the official policy of tumblr is to flag the image and make it invisible to anyone but the OP. Instead this is a different far less official policy…and it seems as though it is completely within the realm of individual tumblr staff to decide what gets to count. Indeed, this is not the only image this has happened to me too. The first two blogs of mine that got deleted we’re actually nsft blogs, unlike my current blogs, they actually technically did violate tumblr guidelines…now mind you I was no longer posting original nsft content on their at time of their deletion…but still they’d previously been porn blogs. ANYWAYS…if you run a very popular nsft blog you’ll notice that your most popular post occasionally just disappear. Maybe if you’re not paying attention you presume you just can’t track it down or no one has reblogged it lately…but no, they (staff) straight up extrajudicially remove your content. I say extrajudicially because they do have official policy and protocols they should be following, aka flagging the content and/or labeling the content. But no, they fucking remove it.

And when they remove it, it’s gone for good, for everyone. For instance, the above photo, the “ew tumblr” photo…that’s not the original photo, that’s a screenshot of that photo. You can’t post the original, the code of that photo is forever banned. It’s not even just one account either. For instance, to test this, I attempted to upload an old “missing” nsft image from my original blog, which is not associated with this email, and is not even associated with my IP address. And this is what happened:

Tumblr’s transphobia runs so deep they are eager and willing to circumvent their own policies and procedures, the staff acting like thin skinned vigilantes on their own website where they held all the power to start with anyways.

eeewwwwwwwww

unblur me now staff

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This only its Magic the Gathering Cards <3

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*trots over to you with a pinecone gift* do you wanna be friends…..

awoooooo!!!!! 🩶🩶🩶🩶