merrilymacabre

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This is the second time in my voting history that I’ve participated in flipping a red seat in Alabama for Democrats (the previous time being my beloved Doug Jones) so it’s always funny to see people turn around and say voting doesn’t matter when I’ve seen it twice in the past ten years flip seats in what is supposed to be safe Republican country. Republicans are digging their own grave with their radicalization and it is making them lose (and with your help we can make them lose harder). Vote.

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I must not mock Gen Alpha. Mocking Gen Alpha is the mind killer. Mocking Gen Alpha is the little-death that brings total generational solidarity obliteration. I will engage with Gen Alpha lovingly. I will permit them to be cringe. And when they grow up I will turn my eye to their accomplishments. Where mocking has gone there will be nothing. Only generational solidarity remains

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If a worker who isn't the owner says ANYTHING similar to "I'm not really supposed to do this but-" and then does something that helps you, under no circumstances inform the business, including through reviews. You tell them that the worker was polite, professional, the very model of customer service and why you like to go there. You do not breathe a word of the rulebreaking.

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sorry boss i need to go home from work immediately. it's an emergency. yeah they've released a new photo of ed teach with the dangly earring. i can't believe it either. okay bye

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"Now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and Lucifer’s kid", AKA queering domesticity par excellence

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https://t.co/VjxbxVYdFq?ssr=true

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Such a great movie!!

(He's putting her in a cab, btw. He's a PI and she snuck there with him by hiding in the trunk. Ah, the 70's. Seriously, watch this movie!)

The Nice Guys, 2016.

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Such a great movie.

THE NICE GUYS (2016)

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This guy is really going to regret sitting down with Jon

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Star-crossed lovers

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Oh man, one of their best episodes. Top 25. I remember having the book of this one (when I was 13)? I loved it. So creepy.

You knew they wouldn’t believe you, why did you push it? Maybe I thought you caught the right guy. And maybe I run into so many people, who are hostile, just because they can’t open their minds to the possibilities, that sometimes the need to mess with their heads, outweighs the millstone of humiliation.

The X-Files Rewatch | 1x03 “Squeeze”

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PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.