Art by Klegs

y'all are absolutely free to use tumblr however you please but I want redditors to know that they could, hypothetically, start a sideblog about a particular topic, add moderators to it, turn on submissions (and asks), make an "about" page laying out rules and such, and create a good tagging system. If you want it to be a bit more familiar.

A lot of folks are responding to the whole Reddit situation by calling for the return of decentralised forums, and I think it's important to remember that, contrary to certain popular narratives, the reason early 2000s forum culture has fallen by the wayside is not because people are Just Lazy. Certainly, ease of use is part of it, but a much larger part of it is how vulnerable self-hosted forums are.

Basically, the problem is that even the largest and most carefully managed self-hosted forums can be rendered unusable more or less indefinitely by a single sufficiently determined hostile actor. This can take the form of both attacks on the forum's social infrastructure (i.e., via sock-puppet accounts, botting, organised "raids", etc.) and attacks on its technical infrastructure (i.e., via hacking, DDoS, etc.). In either case, a self-hosted forum has no real defence, and the majority of decentralised forum communities survive only by virtue of their relative obscurity; once a self-hosted forum manages to attract the attention of That One Guy who's willing to devote his life to shitting the place up over some microscopic slight, it's effectively game over.

Right now, there are essentially only two mitigation strategies:

To be clear, these are not intractable problems; other solutions may well exist. However, any proposed plan for bringing decentralised public forums back needs to address them. If you're going in operating under the assumption that forums have become marginalised simply because corporations are evil and people are lazy, you're setting yourself up to learn the hard way why self-hosted forums no longer seem to be capable of growing beyond a certain point.

Welcome to tumblr's own AITA!

Asks are open and anon is on. Please submit your own stories to be judged by the court of tumblr! Each story will come with a poll, judgements are as follows:

YTA=You're the asshole NTA=Not the asshole NAH=No assholes here: everyone is some level of justified ESH=Everyone sucks here: you're all assholes INFO=Not enough information to judge

Oh hell yeah I can't wait for the discourse

Lesbiinae

Say a Happy Pride to the best group of dinosaurs (birds) you may not have heard of - subfamily Lesbiinae!

This is a group of hummingbirds and, yes, they were named for Lesbos. And Sappho.

While there are many genera in this wonderful group, there are three species divided among two of them which are worth pointing out:

Lesbia victoriae, the Black-Tailed Trainbearer

The Green-Tailed Trainbearer, Lesbia nuna

And lastly, the Red-Tailed Coment, Sappho sparganurus

I am genuinely confused why these are not more popular on the Queer Site, but here we are: the three Dinosaurian lesbian icons, Lesbia nuna Lesbia victoriae and Sappho sparganurus.

Gd they're so cute I can't

I started a dumb stim game yesterday that seemed like a good way to quell the adhd while I listened to audiobooks and I was gonna throw them a couple bucks for ad free but what they wanted was EIGHT DOLLARS A WEEK. To frost cupcakes on a conveyor belt. On a mobile game with shitty graphics.

Anyway, that last tweet goes way to hard.

Sky pirates will never go out of fashion sky pirates you will always be famous when there's pirates but they live in a blimp or a literal sailing ship with wings? Nothing Will Ever Top That.

Ma’am. What are you doing. You can’t be here.

This is my childhood home and my babies will grow up here too.

Ma’am. This is an orphanage.

And?

Good point. Welcome home, ma’am.

I AM FINE I’M NOT CRYING

California Mammals. Illustrated by Hans J. Peeters. 1988.

Internet Archive

brazilians are making gringos cry by telling them we eat capybaras (which some of us do btw but nvm)

its because gringos see them as exotic Chill Magical Friendos that belong in japanese hot springs and cute memes and not like. An actual animal that has been eaten by people in South America for millennia

I think pigs are adorable but I eat pork all the time. I just don't understand this mindset even though I come across it all time.

Big guinea pig, prolly taste good

For future reference

reblog to save a life in the (hopefully distant) future

We’re not making out of the cyberpunk dystopia huh

You guys really need to understand that this is not a fucking dog

This is such a good example of why we need to be very self aware about our fiction.

Sentient robots that deserve rights and love are fictional. We made them up in stories.

Now, it's my favorite kind of fiction. I love it. But it's not real. It's a metaphor for oppressed human beings.

Sentient AI doesn't exist. There are corporations, and maybe even someday governments, who will want to convince you that it does, now and in the future.

Replikas don't care about you and that robot dog is a military weapon.

This is ironic 'cause military and police robot "dogs" (and the other robots they build) are built to do harm to oppressed people.

Yeah, the very people that are represented metaphorically in fiction by robots and androids.

Fiction is fun, and I love fictional robots with my whole heart. But I am not about to let it make me stupid about real life. :)

These things are not your friends. They are machines that will be used to hurt you and to hurt others. Do not fall for the propaganda that these things are just fun little friends! The above articles are the reality. Sorry.

Deep in the article, there’s this nugget:

When people say “fuck u/spez,” this is Spez. I do not have the sort of imagination that can readily convert the way Reddit communities currently work to “businesses.”

This sounds like making Tumblr the new PDF

With the power of cryptocurrency, you too can invest in r/overwatchfeet

this place really is the new PDF