#but we have very different cultural experiences

[fromgoy2joy]

So I’m in a health care major in college, and I’m having my first season of high holy days as a Jew-ish person. So, being a busy student along with having many days I need to take off in October, I’ve gotten very used to talking to professors.

I’m in a class for cultural advocacy and bias in the medical setting. We’ve spent hours reviewing case studies, talking about social determinants and education, and general cross cultural acceptance. We talked at length about different and equitable approaches for religious minorities- in terms of dietary needs, holidays, and lifestyle.

I didn’t expect any trouble with taking this class off. So I approached my professor and told her that because of Rosh Hashanah next week, I wouldn’t be able to attend class next Thursday.

She turned to me, very sweetly and said “okay! Just make sure to use your golden pass!”

The one time golden pass is provided to every student in the course- specifically for menial situations. You could use this just because you’re hung over, a little sick or just don’t feel like it.

Religious holidays are not- and as noted in my university’s policy on this very matter - “an optional day off.” I should not have to use my one “fun pass” for a genuine cultural obligation. And this isn’t me just saying that. This is the college’s policy.

If this happened in an anatomy class with a STEM driven professor, I’d be a little annoyed but ultimately understanding. But this is a class where we’ve discussed social policy at length and the importance of diversity. The least I could expect was for the fine bullet points on our own school standards to be read.

So as I write an email to her, gently explaining this and having my request in writing, I have to channel my frustration somewhere.

What can I say? I’m very much getting the Jewish experience.

[yuurei20]

I might be dumb but what happens to 4th year students? They’re mentioned but we don’t see them on campus(?) and they can’t play spelldrive? Is it like they go to another campus or??

Hello hello! Thank you for this question! 🏫

We get some information about the fourth-year students in Book 5, where Crewel explains, "At Night Raven, students spend their senior year at internships and research placements related to their magical professions."

Both Crewel and Riddle mention the fourth-year students being on-campus for the culture fair, but we never meet anyone!

Both Ace and Grim comment on never seeing them at the school, and Trey explains that "The typical M.O. for four-year magical academies is that seniors go off-campus for hands-on learning."

Riddle provides more detail:

"Some people apply to shadow a certain special team in an administrative organization, while others leave to excavate or explore ruins, or to decipher ancient texts. Still others accept internships with magic related businesses."

We learn a bit more in Book 7, and the orientation for off-campus internships is the catalyst for the entire Book 7 story! 🥳

Crowley explains:

"The internship program is 100 percent mandatory...Each stint is three months, or one quarter. You can choose up to three internships over the course of the year. It's perfectly valid to devote all three quarters to a single, in-depth internship, as is choosing a different internship each quarter to gain a wider breadth of experience. The internships are at businesses, research institutes, and foundations that cooperate with our school...Be aware that your options will differ based on your electives, class credits, and grades. And in addition to interviews, some internships have special exams you must pass to be eligible. Each quarter, you must receive an evaluation of a B or higher at your internship and submit a report. You will not get credit without those two things. If you receive credit for two of the three quarters, then you'll qualify to take the graduation exam."

Concerning Spelldrive: you are very much correct!

While both game- and novel-Leona say that he intends to participate in the Spelldrive tournament the following year, novel-Jack points out that he isn't going to be on campus to do so:

"Both Malleus-senpai and Leona-senpai are gonna move up next year, so they won’t be here for the tournament anyway. We’re lucky we only had to compete with that monster athlete for one year.'

-Twisted Wonderland the second novel (fan translation)

So it seems that presentations at the cultural festival are tied into the internships themselves, so they are allowed (and maybe mandatory?) but Spelldrive tournaments are not? 🧐 Possibly!

[ahmadallouhahmad]

The bitter truth is that the successive wars on Gaza were not only for revenge, but also for other reasons, such as organ trafficking, practical weapons testing, theft of antiquities, theft of natural gas, theft of banks, in addition to the theft of the possessions of the people of Gaza.

Organ trading

I can provide evidence of this with many examples, including the organ trade, where Palestinian corpses were found without internal organs, skin, or tissues removed from their bodies by specialists, according to reports from international institutions and the army’s own admissions that there are specialized teams for such work in the occupation army.

Weapons Tests

The situation is different with regard to weapons. Weapons that have been tested in the field have a high marketing potential, unlike untested weapons. Therefore, many countries seek to test their weapons in the war in Gaza. The matter is not limited to testing weapons, but extends to practical training for pilots and soldiers on the ground from countries that we believe are friendly to Palestine. Therefore, the war in Gaza is almost a multinational war against our people who have been besieged for many years in the largest open prison in the world.

Theft of natural resources

In addition to stealing natural resources, most importantly the natural gas found off the coast of Gaza, whose estimated value exceeds two trillion dollars, the occupation authorities issued six licenses to explore for natural gas in Gaza’s internal waters during the current war on Gaza, which had previously prevented the Palestinian Authority from exploiting these resources by using illegal force for decades.

Antiquities theft

Gaza is known to be a crossroads between continents and was a site of conflict between countries that existed over time, such as the Persians, Pharaohs, Greeks, Romans, and all the successive countries on this land. This led to the existence of diverse antiquities and a very rich cultural heritage. Here you find the Roman antiquities in the city of Zahra, which is the place of control of the occupation forces in what is currently called the Netzarim Corridor, and the Pharaonic antiquities also discovered in Rafah, in addition to the Greek antiquities found in the Sudanese region. All of this is sold for astronomical sums outside Gaza, including the bronze statue of Apollo, worth one hundred million dollars, which was transferred in an unknown way to Europe after it was discovered on the beach of Deir al-Balah.

groundwater theft

It was not limited to all these thefts, but it also extended to the theft of groundwater in the Gaza Strip, and this is the main reason that increased the amount of salts and minerals in drinking water at rates exceeding the rates suitable for human consumption. The occupation’s determination of certain areas to occupy did not come in vain in the past years, as their location was above the groundwater wells in the Gaza Strip, and they transported that water in huge quantities to the Negev Desert, not caring about the Palestinians’ need for water, and all of this was done using excessive and illegal force.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing our suffering. This is a small part of our experiences and our lives. You are now responsible for saving my life and the lives of my children. Donate twenty dollars to save us from genocide. Remember, our lives are in your hands.

[hyperlexichypatia]

What some of y'all call "recovery" and "healing" is just... growing up.

The theme I keep coming back to, the theme I keep writing about over and over, is the inextricability of ableism (specifically neurobigotry) and ageism.

The pathologizing of youth. The infantilizing of disabled adults. The structuring and micromanaging of childhood leading to ever more opportunities for "deviancy" to be classified as "disordered." The "neurological" push to raise the age of majority. The constant framing of disabled parents and caregivers as "unfit" or "bad influences" on children. And on and on.

Ageism and neurobigotry are such an interconnected tangle loop mobius strip that people are using the "healing"/"recovery" framework for basic human maturation.

When you were little, you uncritically accepted the worldview of your parents and other adults in your life, but now that you're older and "recovered," you see it differently?

That's called growing up. You grew up.

When you had less information and experience informing your worldview, you saw things one way, and now that you've "healed," you see things differently?

That's called learning. You learned new information and changed your perspective accordingly.

Look, learning and change and growth and maturation are (or should be) lifelong processes with no endpoint, and one of the cultural factors making people so weird about "maturity" and age of majority issues is the assumption that a "Real Adult" is in their fixed final form. So people think "If I've changed and grown in the past 5 years, that means that 5-years-ago Me was Still A Child and should not have been allowed to make major life-altering decisions," and also think that once they reach An Endpoint, they can or should stop changing. And that's a problem.

But. But. Changes in one's relationship to oneself and one's family of origin are especially common during times of major transition. That's not pathological. That's not even abnormal. If you see the world differently than you did before a major life transition, that does not mean that you went from a diseased state to a nondiseased state ("recovery"), or from an injured state to an uninjured state ("healing"). Time passed. You got older. Everyone else got older. You changed. Other people changed. Your family changed. The social context in which you live changed. The pathology paradigm has no place in this phenomenon.

People are out here saying that "People should heal themselves before they have their own children," and then when asked, what they mean by "heal themselves" is "learn how to effectively communicate with children." That. That is a skill. Learning a skill is not "healing." Lack of a particular skill set is not a disorder you have to "recover" from. You just have to learn the skill.

But that's also why when we say "You don't have to recover from your disabilities, recovery isn't a moral obligation," people say things like "You want to use your disability as an excuse not to change and grow."

My good bitch, what does change and growth have to do with recovery?

And this isn't even a new observation, because people have talked about how parents of developmentally disabled children will credit "therapy" and "recovery" for their children's natural developmental trajectory (if your child gained a skill after a year of intensive therapy, that doesn't mean "the therapy worked," that means they got older and developed the maturation to acquire that skill). A lot of the rhetoric around early childhood education does the same thing (the reason your 6 year old can hold a pencil now and he couldn't last year is because his bones got stronger and his fine motor skills improved, not because his high-quality preschool made him ready to compete).

But this. This is adults doing it to themselves! And it's so very original-sin-coded. You are born Unhealthy, but through continual effort and right practice, you can Recover and Heal.

No! You just grew up!

[steaming-system-takes]

my hot take is that internet system culture absolutely DESTROYS one of the key principles of dissociative identity at its core. hear me out.

disclaimer: not pro endo!

everyone in basically any context would agree that every individual's brain is a highly unique fingerprint and a projection of an uncontrollable consciousness. that being SAID. why are there RULES about how a system can and can't function? i understand that there are diagnostic criteria and trends, but it is so important to understand that this stuff is literally curated by our subconscious minds and is NOT SUBJECT TO CONTROL OR CONFORMITY !

how is it possible that introjects can't exist? you're telling me that my subconscious mind is able to create People out of thin air and force my mind to split itself into pieces but it also follows rules on what the guy's name can be and how he can act and what he looks like? (in tandem with each other of course)

this is my Issue With Internet System Culture. we can all agree that DID is severely under-researched but somehow we also manage to make up these random rules for ourselves.

i have had a very personal experience with this, which is why i feel qualified to talk about it. i spent the first few years of knowing my system on twitter (of all ungodly places) and my system behaved like everyone elses. co-conciousness, small numbers, lots of labels, super rigid roles, introjects dont deviate from source, solid switching, etc etc.

once i got off of twitter and just started hanging out on my own, my system's behavior changed DRAMATICALLY.

The Stuff You Feed Your Subconscious Mind Will Impact How It Treats Your System.

once i stopped letting the influence of system Rules and what can and can't happen, my system digressed into a more logical (but less rigid) process. roles spread out, the front room held a different function, switches felt different, even fronting was almost a different experience. and it was SO MUCH EASIER. i haven't felt like i was faking in over a year. i haven't worried about splitting in so long.

systems, with all the love and respect on this planet and in my heart, if you feel like you're faking, delete the app. unfollow the tag. your brain is a fingerprint, stop trying to match it to anyone else's . your system functions in a unique and curated way in order to protect you in your childhood. there was no manual when your trauma happened. i love you 🫶

^

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the whole "Fandom Is An Escape, so why should I have to care this much about misogyny/racism/ableism/transphobia/etc." thing. Idk about the rest of you, but it gets kind of hard for me to "escape" when I keep seeing people say the same vile things about characters who share aspects of my identity that I hear all the time in real life.

[hella1975]

all hate to tiktok for taking 'having a space to more openly and actively talk about different cultures' to mean 'cultures are NOT to be shared and we must be vigilantly defensive of our cultures for fear of appropriation, a word that can be applied to any multicultural interaction'. like of course cultural appropriation is a very real problem but ive seen with the access to global multicultural conversation that tiktok provides it's made people TERRIFIED to even interact with cultures other than their own for fear of 'doing it wrong'. like at some point you have to acknowledge that in the real world of the great outdoors, the majority of people are eager to SHARE their cultures. yes there are ignorant questions and biases but also... how do you think those things get unlearnt? i dont understand how deciding that multiculturalism is an elephant in the room instead of a normal thing that should just be talked about and lived with is supposed to benefit anyone? and kids on tiktok are CONVINCED that it's a time bomb of a conversation to have and therefore must be avoided at all costs but like. people generally LOVE their home and their culture and are PROUD of it and want to share it. how have we made it so that showing genuine interest and a desire to understand something so integral to a person's identity is now feared and borderline demonised?

[despazito]

Being second generation half Russian in Canada is like a weird purgatory bc of course i reap all the benefit of white privilege and pass as just another white Canadian mf yet ppl still treat your country of origin as some crazy foreign boogeyman and regurgitate insane propaganda, but if your parents retained their communist moral compass (75% of them turned into materialistic consoomers the moment the country opened up) you also just feel this immense cognitive disconnect from the west and Canadian ideology. It's like an identity in here ...

[j-esbian]

i lost the post but i saw someone talking about how some of y’all act like being weird is a choice and like. YEAHHHHHHH.

that’s fine, it might be for you. but i just live like this and don’t know any other way. like yeah i’ve worked customer service, i can do innocuous small talk, but anything beyond that, i don’t understand what i’m missing. and it’s frustrating to see the tonal disconnect especially from people who are like “uwu embrace weirdness!!” where they’re like. dressing quirky and talking about bugs and listening to obscure music and eschewing small talk to ask Deep Questions on the first date and unlearning their tendency to not infodump. and generally have an idea of what Weirdness is supposed to look like. idk man some of us wake up and get out of bed and can’t figure out why the rest of their coworkers chitchat with each other but when they join the conversation it dies.

weirdness is value neutral. let’s stop trying to turn it into a badge because quite frankly, it’s not a choice for everyone. it’s fucking exhausting to never be on the same wavelength as other people and they’re going to react the way they do and label you the way they will without any conscious actions on your end. it’s difficult to talk about this without feeling like you’ll be dismissed as immature, a teenager whining “no one understands me” but the thing is. sometimes you don’t grow out of feeling alone and different, and there’s no good way to talk about it without feeling like people will think you’re just fishing for pity.

[bandzboy]

very much this... cr.

[thepoisonroom]

it's so goofy to see people theorizing that the current wave of really cute family-friendly queer rep is like a stepping stone to having more options when the lesbians on skins (2007-2013) would absolutely have eaten nick n charlie alive

[kashmirichaiwithmehr]

.

[fourspiceblend]

It's funny cause for the most part of the game, I didn't really care about people's criticisms of Engage's writing and thought they were just mad the story was straightforward and didn't try to be overly complex... But now that I'm (finally) reaching the endgame, there's a loooot of weird plotholes that 3H would be jealous of lol.

[an-asuryampasya]

huh. I always associated chick peas with Mediterranean cooking more than any other cuisine - including my own - but then wiki tells me in 2019, India was responsible for 70% of global chickpea production.

which, huh.

something something numebrs REALLY add up even if it's a small fraction of a big number vs large fraction of a small number. a very basic concept but one I keep relearning somehow.

[staff]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[misskamelie]

Wrt the situation(tm), I managed to resolve the communication issue between us and it's been pretty chill since then. I care about them a whole lot, but there's still something I cannot quite grasp about what I feel towards them