The world is so hostile to tweens.....

Like we joke about how our schools growing up would ban the latest toy trends, but that reality genuinely horrific when you think about it. Like maybe 1% of the bans were based on safety, but the rest cited reasoning like

-"kids were bartering for collectibles" (kids learning about economics and product value)

-"kids were wearing them and the colors were too flashy" (kids experimenting with self expression and fashion)

-"kids were playing with them during lunch and recess instead of using our rusted safety hazard playground" (kids utilizing their free time to do what helps *them* unwind).

Play areas specifically geared towards children and especially towards teens are constantly being shut down. "Oh kids today are always on their phones!" Maybe because

-there are barely any arcades left and even less arcades that aren't adult-oriented,

-public pools and gyms are underfunded and shut down,

-"no loitering" laws prevent kids and teens from just hanging out,

-movie theatres only play the latest films and ticket prices are only rising,

-parks and playgrounds are either neglected or replaced with gear only directed at toddlers and unsuitable for anyone older

-genuine children's and young teen media is being phased out in favour of media directed only at very small children or older teens and adults.

-suburbs and even cities are becoming more and more hostile to pedestrians, it's just not safe for kids to walk to or ride their bikes to their friends' houses or other play destinations

Children's agency is hardly ever respected. Kids between the ages of 9-13 are either treated as babies or as full-grown adults, with no in-between. When they ask to be given more independence, they are either scoffed at or given more responsibilities than are reasonable for a child their age.

This is even evident in the fashion scene.

Clothing stores and brands like Justice and Gap are either closing or rebranding to either exclusively adult clothing or young children's clothes, with no middle ground for tweens. Tweens have to choose between clothes designed for adults that are too large and/or too mature for their age and bodies, or more clothes they feel are far too childish. For tween girls especially it's either a frilly pinafore dress with pigtails or a woman's size dress with cleavage. No wonder tween girls these days dress like they're older, it's because their other option is little girl clothes and they don't want to feel childish.

And then when tweens go to school, the books they want to read aren't available because they cover "mature" topics (read: oh no two people kissed and they weren't straight or oh no menstruation was mentioned or oh no a religion other than Christianity is depicted), so kids are left with books for way below their reading level. No wonder kids today are struggling with literacy, it's because they can't exercise and expand their reading skills with age-appropriate books. Readers need to be challenged with new words and concepts in order to grow in their skills, only letting tween read Dr. Seuss and nursery rhymes doesn't let them learn.

Discussions about substance use, reproduction, and sexuality aren't taught at an age-appropriate level in school or even by children's parents, so they either grow up ignorant and more vulnerable to abuse, or they seek out information elsewhere that is delivered in a less-than-age-appropriate manner. It shouldn't be a coin-toss between "I didn't know what sex was until I was 18 and in college" or "my first exposure to sex as a tween was through porn" or "I didn't know what sex was so I didn't know I was being sexually abused as a kid."

Tweenhood is already such a volatile and confusing time for kids, their bodies are changing and they're transitioning from elementary to middle to high school. It's hard enough for them in this stage, but it's made worse by how society devalues and fails them.

We talk about the disappearance of teenagehood, and maybe that's gonna happen in the future, but the erasure of tweenhood is happing in real time, and it's having and going to have major consequences for next generation's adults.

Some excellent points here, but to add onto literacy, the books being taught in schools aren't relevant, interesting or age appropriate. Why are we still ramming Dickens down 14 year olds throats? I can (and have and *do*) teach more and teach better with something like The Hunger Games because learning starts with engagement.

You know you can extol the virtues of contemporary literature while also not denigrating older literature..... right? Right?

Reading Dickens is important to contextualize the historical reality of poverty and class inequality in the Industrial Age, with lessons about wealth disparity, state-sanctioned violence and servitude, and class consciousness that are still very relevant in the modern day.

Literature classes are (or at least should be) about learning how to read and contextualize and analyze literature from all sorts of time periods and backgrounds, not just contemporary pieces. Students should learn how to engage with difficult and maybe in their minds "irrelevant" or even controversial texts. And if the students aren't engaged with a text then maybe the teacher didn't try hard enough to make it relevant to them.

And frankly the immediate dismissal of older texts in favour of only contemporary texts just reels of anti-intellectualism.

What might be a better way to word that criticism is that education often prioritises what is valued by adults and fails to connects with the interests and needs of the ones being educated.

Or, more simply, yes Dickens is important, but we can be less stuffy about it and also put greater focus on *other* things kids want to read about. The point is "learning starts with engagement", as coffeeangelinabox quite rightly said. And sometimes that means putting the classic lit aside for a minute.

^ agreed. I think part of the issue is you take a kid who doesn't read much, hand them a complex, very dense book with outdated language and historical context they know nothing about...

And then are shocked, SHOCKED when they don't get it or find it dull

Critical and literary analysis is a skill, and the classics are important and often great books. But you don't teach a complete novice to cook by starting with a creme brulee

happy disability pride month to people with no common sense, who has limited problem-solving skills, who can’t “just figure it out” for themselves, and/or needs really clear instructions to do “basic” tasks. you’re really cool and I hope you get all the support you need to thrive, this month and every month

this is happening at my college right now. i’m in my third year here and everyone i know is like, haha, im in danger.

one of my professors earlier today had the perfect word to describe the feeling of it: traumatizing

what they’re doing seems almost illegal, like.. considering desantis brought in the majority of the trustees in one sweep, we didnt even have a chance to dissent their new supermajority firing president okker with no cause. or if it isn’t, it should be illegal, there’s literally no checks and balances happening here. no democracy involved. genuine fascism at work, it’s actually absurd. extremely fucking filthy and despicable political ploy.

yesterday wrt the board of trustees meeting, a student commented, “The fact they are playing [the college president] like she's a game and she is sitting at that table CRYING is something that shakes me.”

this is who they replaced our president with

they don’t care about education or the students at all. they don’t care. we’re chess pieces to them.

read more:

please help us defend ourselves, not just for NCF but for educational freedom in academic institutions in general. donate, spread the word, etc. here’s the site

this son of a bitch is definitely going to run for president in 2024. pay attention to what’s happening on the ground here. it’s very bleak.

a lot has happened but this is really peak shit. they fucking hate us and want to inconvenience us as much as possible

here’s a pdf of the article. i’m a senior btw. i don’t know what to do

House Republicans on Wednesday advanced an appropriations bill for federal environmental agencies that would boost development of the same fossil fuels driving the myriad disasters that have ravaged the Northern Hemisphere this year.

The legislation includes sweeping funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and the White House’s Council of Environmental Quality. It would mandate numerous additional oil and gas lease sales, both on- and offshore, and would advance mining development, including in an area near Minnesota’s iconic Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness where the Biden administration has banned such extraction.

The legislation would also torpedo and stonewall protections for wild animals, and would rescind more than $9 billion provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate law that Democrats passed last year.

Okay so... the public commenting period ends TOMORROW for the USA Forestry Service's planned policies regarding conservation of forest and how forests should be managed. Read about it here.

Many comments have been posted but most of them are form letters, which are next-to-worthless (better than nothing, but still)

An organization I signed up for emails from recently sent out an email asking for more public comments, pointing out that most comments submitted have been the same copy paste over and over. Their solution to this...was to link a tool to create AI-generated comments

THAT IS SO STUPID OH MY GOD.

I don't really know what to do except ask that y'all within the USA please leave your own comments on the proposal, personalizing with how the ongoing health of our forests and preservation of our old growth affects your region and your life specifically.

I'm just really upset that anyone thought using AI for this was a good idea. That could undermine the legitimacy of all feedback that's been posted.

You can post your own comment at the link above, go forth and kick ass (after reading everything on the page providing information and context!)

There's a long document explaining their discussion questions, copy-pasted below. But a quick flip-through a couple responses confirms a bunch of auto-generated letters that only address the old-growth question which is still an incredibly important question. But there are other points contained in this list of the USFS's overarching questions including doing basic tribal consultation regarding management of these places, maintaining biodiversity in non-old-growth forests, the role of forestry in disaster prevention and recovery, and thinking about watershed management and protection.

So yes, please comment, the gov't does (occasionally) take public opinion into account when they put stuff on these types of websites, especially if the opinions are real and not auto-generated. Don't try to tell me the aging population on this webbed site doesn't have Opinions on Trees.

We are interested in public feedback and requests for Tribal consultation on a range of potential options to adapt current policies or develop new policies and actions to better anticipate, identify, and respond to rapidly changing conditions associated with climate-amplified impacts. Overarching questions include:

• How should the Forest Service assess, plan for and prioritize conservation and climate resilience at different organizational levels of planning and management of the National Forest System ( e.g., national strategic direction and planning; regional and unit planning, projects and activities)?

Examples, comments, and Tribal consultation would be especially helpful on the following topics:

1. Relying on Best Available Science, including Indigenous Knowledge (IK), to Inform Agency Decision Making.

a. How can the Forest Service braid together IK and western science to improve and strengthen our management practices and policies to promote climate resilience? What changes to Agency policy are needed to improve our ability to integrate IK for climate resilience?

b. How can Forest Service land managers better operationalize adaptive management given rapid current and projected rates of change, and potential uncertainty for portions of the National Forest System?

c. Specifically for the Forest Service Climate Risk Viewer, what other data layers might be useful, and how should the Forest Service use this tool to inform policy?

2. Adaptation Planning and Practices. How might explicit, intentional adaptation planning and practices for climate resilience on the National Forest System be exemplified, understanding the need for differences in approach at different organizational levels, at different ecological scales, and in different ecosystems?

a. Adaptation Planning:

i. How should the Forest Service implement the 2012 Planning Rule under a rapidly changing climate, including for assessments, development of plan components, and related monitoring?

1. How might the Forest Service use management and geographic areas for watershed conservation, at-risk species conservation and wildlife connectivity, carbon stewardship, and mature and old-growth forest conservation?

ii. How might the Forest Service think about complementing unit-level plans with planning at other scales, such as watershed, landscape, regional, ecoregional, or national scales?

a. Adaptation Practices:

i. How might the Agency maintain or foster climate resilience for a suite of key ecosystem values including water and watersheds, biodiversity and species at risk, forest carbon uptake and storage, and mature and old-growth forests, in addition to overall ecological integrity? What are effective adaptation practices to protect those values? How should trade-offs be evaluated, when necessary?

ii. How can the Forest Service mitigate risks to and support investments in resilience for multiple uses and ecosystem services? For example, how should the Forest Service think about the resilience of recreation infrastructure and access; source drinking water areas; and critical infrastructure in an era of climate change and other stressors?

iii. How should the Forest Service address the significant and growing need for post-disaster response, recovery, reforestation and restoration, including to mitigate cascading disasters (for example, post-fire flooding, landslides, and reburns)?

iv. How might Forest Service land managers build on work with partners to implement adaptation practices on National Forest System lands and in the WUI that can support climate resilience across jurisdictional boundaries, including opportunities to build on and expand Tribal co-stewardship?

v. Eastern forests have not been subject to the dramatic wildfire events and severe droughts occurring in the west, but eastern forests are also experiencing extreme weather events and chronic stress, including from insects and disease, while continuing to rebound from historic management and land use changes. Are there changes or additions to policy and management specific to conservation and climate resilience for forests in the east that the Forest Service should consider? 3. Mature and Old Growth Forests. The inventory required by E.O. 14072 demonstrated that the Forest Service manages an extensive, ecologically diverse mature and old-growth forest estate.

oh this is a life saver

So these are both “Aw Fuck I’m outta real food” meals BUT ALSO:  if you’re learning how to cook, these are great “baby steps” meals to learn how to cook basics into something enjoyable without “wasting” anything expensive.  Though I maintain that even cooking screw-ups are valuable in terms of lessons learned.

Also they’re great for when you get absorbed in something and you realize your blood sugar is dropping and you need to make something Quick.

Making basic storecupboard or fridge ingredients less basic and more nutritious.

Worker solidarity is the future.

Sharecropping.

FYI if your employer does this, if they have done it for a long time especially, you and your coworkers could be owed huge amounts of unpaid wages and it would be an easy suit if there is a paper trail like this and your employer is placing strict requirements on your behavior while not at work. Employment lawyers generally work on contingency. Just food for thought.

DASHBOARD UNFUCKER V1.0

as 90% of desktop users have probably found out, today @staff released an update that for some insane reason COMPLETELY remodels the dashboard to replicate twitter's. this is of course in the wake of numerous other thoroughly hated changes and a continued refusal to fix any of the site's actual problems, half of which stem directly from site management.

HOWEVER, thanks to the power of jQuery, i was able to throw together a userscript that remodels the dashboard back to its original look almost perfectly.

here is my dashboard right now, with the script active:

and here is the old dashboard in separate tab container that hasn't received the update:

it's hardly perfect; i had trouble making it force reload to the fixed layout when switching between other pages and the dashboard, and it currently only fixes just the dashboard. it's also completely untested on browsers other than firefox, and chances are it looks a bit screwy on ultrawide monitors. but for now at least, it's a good fix.

the unfucker is a tampermonkey userscript. all you have to do to use it is install the tampermonkey extension, hit "create new script", and replace the default code on the page with the script (link here) and save it.

Aiming to reclaim the coal-fired power plant in Bow for life-affirming purposes, a group of activists used pickaxes, shovels, and rakes to plant a garden in the middle of one of the plant’s access roads on Sunday afternoon.  After a few dozen state police in full riot gear showed up, 18 people were arrested.  

The gardening action followed a rally attended by about 200 people in the ballfield opposite Merrimack Station, New England’s last operating coal-fired power plant.  Mary Fite, a Bow resident who came with her partner and their three children, addressed her comments to the plant’s Connecticut-based owner, Granite Shore Power, a joint venture of Atlas Holdings and Castleton Commodities.  “They don’t care about your health, and they don’t care about your children.  They don’t care about future generations,” she charged.  “Granite Shore Power does not care about climate change or the future of planet earth.”

I've seen a couple of comments from someone around paying Tumblr for stuff that I want to address. I'm not going to mention the person who made these comments because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I think they're worth talking about. The comments in question are: "you think user money is anything compared to advertisers" and in a pinned post they tell people to not give money to Tumblr.

The thing is, user money can definitely be something compared to advertisers. There are multiple ways that an online company (in general, not just Tumblr) can make money, but let's break them down into three categories:

A. From the users - selling merchandise, subscriptions, premium packages, asking for donations, etc.

B. From advertisers - selling views and space on the platform to companies that use it to try and sell stuff to the users

C. From data - selling information about the user base to other companies that might use it in a whole bunch of dodgy and malicious ways, or just try to find better ways to sell stuff to us

All three of these are viable ways for a company to make money, and many companies use some combination of the above. What matters is what the company sees as their PRIMARY method of making money, because that is what drives their corporate decisions.

If none of the methods are making money, the company will shut down, and I don't want Tumblr to shut down - I like this hellsite. If option B is what makes them the most money, then they will make business decisions that make the platform look better to advertisers and this is likely to drive everything in a more algorithm-centric direction and give users fewer options to curate their own experience. If option C is what makes them the most money, then they will focus on features that enable privacy invasion and data harvesting. If option A is what makes them the most money, then they have to think about how to keep the users spending that money. Now, option A doesn't always lead to good outcomes - in mobile/online games it can end up as loot box gambling add-ins and pay-to-win options, but thankfully Tumblr isn't the sort of site where loot box mechanics would make a lot of sense. Which makes it more likely they'll go the other option: delivering the features that users want to keep them coming back and paying for subscriptions. 

I would much rather Tumblr goes for option A than options B or C because it means that Tumblr is more likely to put the user base first when making decisions instead of advertisers. We just need to show them that it's a viable option.

Tumblr is trying what online games have done for years - crabs and checkmarks are the equivalent of horse armour DLCs and cosmetics. They're trying to make the business work through microtransactions. If enough people spend a small amount, it can add up to a large amount of money. The point of crab day is to send a message to Tumblr that option A is viable so that they make the choice to focus on that. If everyone goes, "No, don't spend money on Tumblr, you're nothing compared to advertisers," then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and Tumblr will have to go with options B or C if they want to keep making money.

I'm not giving Tumblr money out of naivety or because I think they're somehow deserving - I'm giving them my money because I would much rather they make money directly from me and give them an incentive to provide features I like, than by making the site worse so that they can exploit me.

I think donations is a lot more down-to-earth(and ethical) than data selling.

oh seems very suspicious to see the barbie movie tumblr pop up on my dash after the strike. maybe it was made before, but I’m actually seeing it now

remember:

there’s no boycott on going to see new media

but there is a promotional blackout

don’t do the studio’s marketing work for them

I just checked their archive. They created it Today, July 17th.

prior to the strike they did not have an official tumblr lmaoooo

don’t reblog their shit

this might be a hot take but i think we should still be required to wear masks on airplanes

we need to start hounding people into wearing masks again. why aren’t you wearing a mask on public transit? why aren’t you wearing a mask in the crowded grocery store? why aren’t you wearing a mask in the literal hospital? if you’re half as progressive as you claim to be you’d require masks at your busy events. you’re not a progressive if you’re leaving out the immunocompromised. plus covid can still fuck you up even if you’re perfectly healthy and had your vaccines. wouldn’t you rather be unnecessarily cautious than risk getting yourself or someone else sick? put your mask back on in the crowded mall. coward

People using voice AIs to make songs and whatnot. You weaklings, develop and foster actual skills not based around commodifying actors and artists into soulless imitations and learn to remix and sample official lines like memes of old for yours or so help me

Stuff like this is why voice Synthesizers such as VOCALOID is better than AI voice in terms of consent, like yeah they sound like robots but at least they’re created with the actors’ permission.

AI voices is anything but consensual.

Past time to right a wrong.

#cmesin

fyi tumblr is fucking over people with custom domains

if you have a custom domain set, DO NOT UNTICK THE BUTTON on blog settings. you’re not allowed to add it back. (nope, that’s not mentioned anywhere on blog settings itself.) if you switch hosts and need to update nameservers, congrats! you’re fucked

custom domains were a feature that’s been available over a decade, but they’ve been unceremoniously removed. the idea of “legacy” domains is a joke

this is doubly egregious because they absolutely could be selling domains for people that don’t have one, while still allowing those of us that already had a domain to keep using ours. they also don’t even allow you to pay to use your own. so if someone bought a domain specifically to use on tumblr, if they accidentally untick the button then poof! they’re fucked because they can’t re-buy their own domain from tumblr 

it’s honestly pathetic how much of a transparent cash grab this is at worst, and how badly implemented this was at best. this is what happens when you accept incompetency as a modus operandi bc “lol quirky hellsite”

i highly, HIGHLY recommend not investing in this feature due to that incompetency and lack of transparency

Okay! So, management “clarified” yesterday’s post by saying that the chronological dash (algorithm free!) isn’t going anywhere. With that being said, there’s still a lot of concerning stuff and major disconnect between management/staff/users going on. Management is still looking for ways to make tumblr the next big thing and to turn a profit. Which, can’t say I blame them cause bills need to be paid, but enshittification in the spirit of Twitter/TikTok/Reddit/meta isn’t the way to go. Management has also known to be a liar sometimes so keep that in mind.

A lot of people are asking me about protests. What we’re dealing with isn’t something that can be solved with log offs. Right now the things I really really really recommend you do is to go into your settings, export/backup your blog for your own use later. Also, set up and then link a Carrd to your current tumblr with links to any other socials (I’ve got personal livejournal and dreamwidth accounts ready to go) you might use to keep in touch with friends/mutuals. That way if tumblr goes down and/or there’s a mass exodus, you’ll be easier to find.

I want tumblr to stay around for as long as possible. Yet, I don’t want tumblr to just another TikTok clone. The hellsite is going through some awkward and frustrating growing pains that I hope doesn’t bring down the house of cards.

Until something else happens, this is what’s going on.

I honestly doubt they’re actually keeping the beloved chronological dashboard.

Also, I didn’t even know about the word “enshittification” until a friend messaged me about it a while ago.