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The Heart of Gold

@pajrc1234

she/they/it, 20, hyperromantic lesbian, math and physics nerd, autism, adhd. It is an extraordinary coincidence that you and I meet at this exact moment. We will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.

i suppose i should actually introduce myself! the post i made when i first rejoined gave sort of an exigence but i didn’t actually think to talk about myself

  • my name is Eris, she/they, 19. i am a trans lesbian.
  • i am a math and science kind of person! i'm a sophomore at my college and i'm majoring in physics and minoring in math. i am the sort of person who watches math videos in her downtime.
  • i have adhd! i don't articulate that very often but yeah it should be mentioned that my experiences are definitely at least close enough to adhd to say that i have it. sometimes, it is a bitch! though sometimes it's all right i guess
  • i play a lot of video games! i have a variety of games that (probably due to the adhd) move between "i will do this regardless of the need to sleep" and "i will do this when i'm bored" and "i can't even stand to open this game" every few weeks. right now i'm playing a lot of Kingdom of Loathing and Brawlhalla.
  • i also read a lot of books, specifically fantasy. here are the books i've read since this summer (when i started getting back into reading for fun):
  • The Grishaverse books--S&B trilogy, SOC duology, KOS duology
  • A Darker Shade of Magic trilogy
  • Currently reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (on book 4 right now)
  • some series i enjoy:
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power--guess who's my favorite character lol
  • Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
  • The Dragon Prince
  • The Good Place
  • Bob's Burgers
  • Shadow and Bone (cannot wait for the next season!!!)
  • The Umbrella Academy
  • some kinds of music i listen to:
  • some classic rock: Queen, Styx, a few others
  • showtunes: mostly just Heathers and Wicked, but now that i look at it i'm gonna add some others i like later
  • girl in red
  • MARINA
  • Waterflame--artist that makes music that's in the genre of video game music, but not all necessarily for video games
  • actual video game music. Specifically the Kirby's Epic Yarn OST
  • i love cute animals so much you can send me pictures of your pets. i have 2 dogs of my own and they're just the sweetest (well sometimes they're jerks but they're cute)
  • if you want to chat with me my dm's are open! or just submit an ask. i do not bite. at least, i don't think. more testing needed to minimize uncertainty
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Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

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It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

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It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

Happy touched the moon day!!!

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So what is the threshold in declaring whether this experiment is a mistake or not? Do we need to send feedback in daily? Stop using the site altogether? What will actually be counted vs written off as people not liking change?

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when we A/B test something, it means that one group of people has the new thing, and one group of people has the old thing. this youtube video is a very quick way of explaining that process, i suggest watching it first here.

in this case, with the new navigation layout, our hypothesis is that the new layout will be more easily understood by more people, meaning we'll see more engagement with the navigation items themselves. like literally, more clicks to the things we now have labels for, when before they were just an icon. and the fact they're in a place that's become more standard across the internet: a left-aligned sidebar.

ideally, that will lead to better retention of new users, and even an "aha" moment for people who have been on tumblr for a long time but never really looked at those different destinations. i've been on tumblr since 2009 and even i've found myself clicking on the inbox and activity more than ever, with the new change.

for us to see the change as a "mistake", we'd need to see statistical evidence to contradict that hypothesis, which we're already tracking automatically for everyone in the test. we'd also need to get an overwhelming amount of feedback to contradict any positive gains we do see. sending in negative feedback daily won't do that.

so if you want the whole thing to go away: we need to see a negative behavior change in potentially millions of peoples' behavior. that has happened before! we've rolled changes back that caused that negative reaction. that's the whole point of these experiments.

and if you want to send us feedback about how the experience is negatively affecting you: please, please do!!! despite the statistical evidence, we want to know if there are accessibility concerns we missed, usability concerns, design considerations, etc etc, because that's why we're running this as an experiment and not just launching it to everyone. that feedback is really important to us, as long as it's constructive.

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so to people with this update: stop using the site, which is what i'll be doing as of now.

because there's no OTHER way to use the site than 'click' on the new things. if they're only counting engagement and people using the new stuff, then you HAVE to stop using the site, completely.

if you have this update, i suggest sending feedback and then not using tumblr at all or at the very least, typing in the url of what you're trying to reach which is what i've been doing since the changes are that unwieldy. for example, i just go /inbox instead.

but really it seems like the only thing that will work is to stop.

happy Thursday the 20th

I’d have to wait months or even years for another chance to reblog this, so why the fuck not?

next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

You know, just in case you wanted to set your queue for the next 6 years

TODAY

Since it’s now August 20, 2020… The next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th:

  • May 2021
  • January 2022
  • October 2022
  • April 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2024
  • February 2025
  • March 2025
  • November 2025
  • August 2026

If you wanted to set your queue for the next six years.

This is actually the best intro to a porno that has ever existed

There is no way this is a porno

This is the best porno there has ever been.

The way he says “HEY WHAT THE FUCK” shaped me as a person

It’s been over a decade, and I still think “I’m a lemon stealing whore” to myself every time I take fruit off a lemon tree.

Which isn’t often, but it’s often enough.

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Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.

I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

we need to go back to hating tumblr. no more hellsite (affectionate). don't even think of giving these clowns your money. if i see you with a checkmark next to your name i'm opening fire

*sound of gun cocking* they can be disabled

tumblr's current business model isn't profitable and never will be and no amount of scolding from staff blogs or tumblr ad-free pay piggies is gonna fix that. don't let yourself be guilted into buying merch, badges or ad-free. you're throwing your money into a bottomless pit while the techbro ghouls running this website laugh about you at their next board meeting while applauding the shmucks coming up with new ideas on how to twitter- or tiktokify the website

''but tumblr needs to make money!!!''

if tumblr really wants its regular user onboard with keeping the website afloat then we should at least demand that they do the bare minimum in keeping the site functional. and right now, they're not even doing that. every change they've made lately has made the website/app worse. i should give my money to tumblr so what—they can make a more intrusive version of tumblr live? remove the chronical dashboard? come up with an even more transphobic way of doing content moderation? yeah, no thanks

you want to help stop tumblr from murdering itself? here's how!

  • click this link and go to the support page, then click "contact support"
  • click on the category list and click on feedback
  • now you need to tell staff WHY putting in an algorithm will cause the site to fucking die, and be sure to be detailed and not a dick in it. theyre not gonna listen to feedback calling them assholes
  • viola, if @staff listens, we'll be fine

i encourage you to reblog this so we can get as many people leaving feedback as humanly possible. we need to let staff know this is an utterly terrible idea

by the way, tumblr has turned off asks on all of their staff blogs, so this is the only way to tell tumblr how you feel

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here it is again because uh. seems relevant.

Hey. Gentiles. Listen up for a sec.

When September and October are nearing and you’re planning an event: google “Rosh Hashanah *year*” and *Yom Kippur *year*” and then, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t plan your event on those days. In fact, don’t plan any events starting sundown the night before. Those are the three most important days of the Jewish calendar, and, once again, I cannot stress enough how much this little bit of forethought and kindness will make every Jew you know cry tears of joy.

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in 2023, the night before Rosh Hashanah is Thursday evening, September 14.

Rosh Hashanah ends Sunday evening, September 17.

in 2023, the night before Yom Kippur is Saturday evening, September 23.

Yom Kippur ends Monday evening, September 25.

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Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

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It's gonna come as a surprise to most of you, but if you don't want to do that for whatever reason you're allowed to not reblog this post. I'm not holding a gun to your head here I'm just trying to spread the word for people who do want a backup of their stuff.

I swear I did this before the Porn Purge and then completely lost the how-to link, so thank you @magz​ for sharing it again!

  • They didn't want to sit through demeaning and bigoted religious services just for a place to sleep. (Church run food banks do this a lot too btw).
  • They were late and the shelter wouldn't let them in and voided the rest of their allowed stay bc they didn't call and tell the shelter they couldn't make it in before closing.
  • One of the other people at the shelter got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.
  • One of the SHELTER EMPLOYEES/VOLUNTEERS got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.
  • The shelter refuses to disclose if allergens are in the food they're providing saying, "This is all you're getting, be glad for this much and thank god!"
  • Shelter refused to believe person is homeless saying, "You are FAR too clean and nicely dressed!"
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Mario creepypasta fundamentally doesn't work because you know what Mario would actually do if we saw some dimension-warping hundred-handed cosmic horror? He wouldn't lose his mind; he'd take one look at that Shin Megami Tensei looking fucker, pull out his dorky little mushroom-shaped cell phone, hit the fourth number down on his contact list, and go "hey, Kirby, I think-a one-a your boys got lost".

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"Or he'd just fight it himself" no, he would not, for two reasons:

  1. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Mario's central plot structure. Mario always gets his ass beat in his initial encounter with an outside context problem, then spends the bulk of the game going around gathering allies and kicking the legs out from under the outside context problem's support structure.
  2. This sort of thing clearly falls into another protagonist's idiom, and Mario is a union man – he's not going to scab on Kirby. Perish the thought!

"I wouldn't take-a the food from another video game mascot's plate!"

"I don't think Kirby gets paid for this."

"That's-a not what I said."

*off-screen vacuum sounds*