unclekow - Tumblr blog

[unclekow]

What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?

An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.

[unclekow]

love the trans women in your online, irl, and global community right now, today, before she's humiliated, ostracized, and exiled, before anyone ever raises a hand against her, before any words can break her down, love the trans women in your life out loud and protect her, defend her, speak up for her, but before it all love her and be her friend, her family, her community

every trans woman deserves safety, security, and happiness and the least we can do is everything in our power to make it happen

[unclekow]

fuck this website, i'm gonna go read books or something instead. you know where to find me

[unclekow]

either way im having lots of fun in this age of digital fiefdoms run by bigot libertarians who would be atomized by a medieval court jester. casual reminder that i am @Catgirlhell on basically any and all platforms including 🔵sky and cohost

https://cohost.org/catgirlhell?page=0

[unclekow]

need cash, gotta fill some slots waaaaa

[unclekow]

The united states is the largest exporter of genocide on the planet. Death to the USA and its imperialist walking dogs.

[unclekow]

tumblr's current ceo is really cementing his reputation here because when this site inevitably gets sold again everyones just going to start saying that the new owner took over after the last one died in a hammer car explosion

[unclekow]

JOHN  HARRIS

[unclekow]

You gonna do anything or make any statement about the rampant transmisogyny on this hellsite, especially in cases like predstrogen recently? Or yall gonna stay silent and keep letting/making us get pushed off of it.

I have a number of asks about this, so this is to address all of them, I won't do each individually.

We generally do not comment on individual cases, but because there seems to be mass misinformation around this, I will make an exception and comment on predstrogen.

First, Tumblr has a number of LGBT+ including trans people on staff, and they see things from the inside fully, and they're not protesting this case.

Why do we wrongly have a transphobe reputation? We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally). As soon as we were aware that person was fired, and we later terminated the entire relationship with that contracting firm and have brought almost everything in-house (at great cost). I have previously commented on this publicly, several times.

I am not aware of any Automattician (people who work at Automattic and Tumblr) who has made any transphobic moderation actions. If it's reported it is investigated immediately, if anything were found that person would be terminated for cause immediately.

In predstrogen's case in addition to some mistagged sexually explicit posts, which on its own wouldn't be that bad, we have documented cases of harassment against other users. Most importantly, and why she is banned from Tumblr for life, is she made threats of violence against Tumblr staff.

That is never okay. Threats of violence is not protected speech. We will work with police and FBI where appropriate. I just got a death threat yesterday from someone mad about predstrogen, and that account was immediately terminated.

So regardless of whether you still think Tumblr staff is somehow a bunch of transphobes, know that threats of violence or death are still not acceptable and will result in immediate and serious action. Know that when you rile people up, they can do dumb things with possibly permanent consequences.

(2 hours later update: I have changed instances of the pronoun "they" or "their" to "the account" because I am unaware of pronoun preference in this instance and don't want to misgender anyone. Thank you for the people who reported this as an issue. Update 2: "She" is apparently better, the post now says that. Sorry for the mistake.)

Here's one (of many!) examples of the harassment violations, this one targets me but there are others targeting other users on the site.

The second part seems to indicate she wanted to be suspended, I'm unaware of why, perhaps to create this sort of uproar.

[unclekow]

This is in reference to a post that the ceo Matt made targeting prestrogen. The claims they made were lies (about things like threats against staff), and he also continued to dm random people with some relation to predstrogen about the post

[unclekow]

[unclekow]

My green glass dagger

[unclekow]

pretty boy

[unclekow]

You have been blessed by high quality Minmo. Reblog to grow strong and healthy.

[unclekow]

part-timer at the maid cafe !! (he/him)

[unclekow]

setting your blue alert to caramelldansen is praxis tbh

[unclekow]

Happy birthday, Karen Silkwood! (February 19, 1946)

A chemical technician and a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, Karen Silkwood was an employee at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site in Crescent, Oklahoma, where she helped to lead a strike in 1972. Investigating health and safety issues at the plant on behalf of the union, Silkwood discovered multiple violations of safety regulations, exposing workers to unsafe levels of radioactive contamination; Silkwood herself found that she tested around 400 times the legal limit for plutonium. She contacted a journalist for the New York Times, planning to go public with the evidence she had collected. While driving to meet the journalist, Silkwood's car ran off the road, and was found later with her dead body inside, but none of the documents. It has since been theorized that the company had Silkwood murdered in order to cover-up their wrongdoing. Her family later sued Kerr-McGee for negligence in relation to her contamination, and the plant closed in 1975, the year after her death. Her story was later adapted into a movie starring Meryl Streep in 1983.