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sgiandubh · 9 months

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Imma need an in-depth breakdown of Puff please! And I’m not being sarcastic either. Puff pre-dates my time in the outlander fandom.

Regards,

Your curious anon.

Dear Puffy Curious Anon,

If my cantankerous boss would have summoned me at 03:03 pm EEST (when your request landed in my inbox), just to tell me "Imma need an in-depth breakdown of the Greek trade unions' position on the current critical understaffing of the HoReCa sector", I would have politely answered "yes, ma'am, when is the deadline". I would have then turned on my heels, rolled my eyes, sworn like a drunk sailor under my breath (fuck my life comes to mind, pardon my French) and quickly be done with it.

You, bless your Anon heart, wrote: "Imma need an in-depth breakdown of Puff, please". Wee difference, Curious Anon: you are not my cantankerous boss. That being said, since the question has been asked by several people in the comment threads of the day's posts, I am gonna give you my two cents on Queen Pufflander, even if you've been around before I even knew this weird place existed. And hopefully put to rest this nonsense forever (wishful thinking, doubt it will happen).

Once upon a time, when S&C's bantering was the plat du jour on Twitter and this fandom a considerably less toxic place, Puff the Magic Dragon of the US East Coast was one of the Queen Bees of Shipperville. Her blog was witty and no-nonsense (if a tad verbose) and, as *urv, she quickly earned her fair share of side performers: Stella and Deep Throat (SOURCES) or the tarot reader(s) immediately come to mind. People loved Puff and that is only fair, to be honest: I bet the farm she was great fun. Little by little, information traded in DMs started to pile up in her famed Vault, from which she was generously sharing, from time to time, sibylline rants ("maybe they did or maybe they didn't, but don't worry, something happened and all shall soon be revealed"). I can critique that forever and a day and tell you that all this sent people's expectations up the roof and beyond, of course. But, again: I was not here. It is unfairly easy to judge all these things with a historian's eye, and people who lived to tell the tale are far more entitled than me to comment their fandom experience, circa 2015.

When the whole Shatner/Watchtower baliverne started (early 2016, if memory serves) things ugly escalated and rather quickly so. People started jumping ship. With McSideburns already in the house (EIFF comes to mind and a certain poignant S&C penguin picture, too), enter Flukenzie Floozy. Thus, after IFH, Puffy decided to pack her crystal ball & tent and move to greener pastures on Wordpress. There, she held court with a keen eye for the Byzantine politicking of this fandom, not unlike what Perfidious Albion did with regard to the Thirteen Rebelling Colonies, after that Boston Tea Party. Her main moments of intersection with the rest of the shipper community are Covfefe Pics (of course) and Remarkable Week-end (of course). With regard to Covfefe, she quickly cried wolf, but by the time Remarkable Week-end happened, she pulled off a mighty witty breakdown of The Nuptial Charade of the Century. Blaze of glory was Quarantein Ha-wa-wee (of course), when she blamed S for all the world's evils and then some more. After that, she concentrated on her Neverending Feud with *urv (a Private Investigator was, at some point, hired and paid for via crowdfunding), which somehow managed to end (nevertheless) with a Report she might or might not have sent to S, "for further consideration".

As all good prophets, Puffy finally went into Occultation circa 2021, not without warning us that she was torn between Gay Sam & SamCait intellectual traditions, with a wee penchant for the first (reason why I completely ditched her peddling, because IYKYK).

I can understand why people might think I could be Puffy. I am, however, very sure about my own identity, whereabouts and creed: to state the opposite would really, really be mental. I fully assumed my responsibility and went ahead to actually prove you, this morning, I wasn't. Reading her rants was useful, but also taxing. I doubt Stella and Deep Throat were anything else but narrative helpers in a sophisticated Greimas actantial model. Something I would never do, for example: I am confident enough not to need any crutches. And I am very, very sorry for this word vomit: it should come, perhaps, as solace its length could never compete with Puff's storytelling marathons.

To wash my sins (not really: because I really love that picture), here's S,C, a penguin and a cakebox (?), at EIFF 2015. This is, you can be certain, the purest thing on this page, Anon:

#Anon

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject

In 2018, Tumblr announced a ban on “adult content.” That call was made by Verizon, Tumblr’s erstwhile owner, and to call the resulting mess “a shitshow” is an insult to good, hardworking shitshows all over the world.

Verizon enforced this policy with an automated filter, which was charged with analyzing images and categorizing them as “sexual” or “nonsexual.” This is risible enough, like asking a computer to sort videos into “virtuous” or “sinful” but that was just for starters.

Verizon’s ban included a ban on “female-presenting nipples” — a canonically hard-to-define category — but included exceptions for non-sexual nipple images. Hard to imagine that any serious, disinterested computer scientist promising that an algorithm could cleave “female-presenting nipples” from “male-presenting” ones, let alone decide which ones were “sexual” or not.

The filters were…not good. Verizon posted a selection of images that were explicitly permitted under its policies. That post was blocked by Tumblr’s filter.

https://gizmodo.com/tumblrs-porn-filter-flags-its-own-examples-of-permitted-1831151178

It wasn’t just that Tumblr’s AI couldn’t turn its unblinking eye upon the nipples casting their shadows upon the wall of Plato’s Cave and divine their true nature. Tumblr’s AI thought everything was a nipple — or some other potentially “adult” body-part.

[Image ID: A series of nested Tumblr posts marveling at the foolishness of Tumblr’s filter.]

I posted an image of a hand producing a fingerprint. Tumblr’s filter blocked it. I posted a followup about Tumblr’s idiotic filter. Tumblr’s filter blocked that. I did it again. The filter did, too.

https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/recursive-neural-nets.html

Verizon was not good at running Tumblr, which isn’t a surprise, because Verizon’s core competencies are lobbying and union-busting. Eventually the company wrote down its online media assets, taking a $4.6B loss:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/verizon-writes-down-4-6-billion-of-value-of-aol-yahoo-business

Tumblrites didn’t know what to make of the writedown. There was a lot of trepedation, sure, because even after years of mismanagement by Yahoo and then Verizon, Tumblr was still a community that mattered to its members.

What’s more, with the writedown, there was the possibility that someone else — someone less Verizony — would buy the company. That happened! Automattic, creators of Wordpress, announced that they would buy Tumblr. Tumblr’s filter blocked the announcement:

https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/187053987273/yeah-that-news-is-looking-mighty-adult-there

When Automattic took over Tumblr, there was a lot of hope that the adult content ban would be reversed. Tumblr’s adult communities had been hugely important in creating and promulgating a sex-positive, queer-positive, sex-worker-respecting platform, utterly unlike anything else online.

The impact of contributing to and participating in these adult communities can’t be overstated. In Tumblr Porn, Ana Valens offers a memoir of how profoundly Tumblr’s sex-positive spaces (“vanguard of a user-generated sexual revolution”) affected her life:

https://www.instarbooks.com/books/tumblr-porn.html

Verizon’s sex ban didn’t just shut those communities down — it consigned them to the memory-hole, blocking the archivists who scrambled to preserve them:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3bekm/archivists-say-tumblr-ip-banned-them-for-trying-to-preserve-adult-content

But despite the importance of sex to Tumblr’s success and the manifest idiocy of Verizon’s ban, Automattic did not bring back the adult content, and made it clear they had no immediate plans to change that position.

Now, five years later, Tumblr has made its first tentative moves to open the platform to NSFW materials, with a new dashboard that lets views opt into adult content and a labeling system that lets posters flag their uploads:

https://photomatt.tumblr.com/post/696578252906659840/staff-introducing-community-labels-as-you

This is a far cry from Tumblr’s original full-throated, wide-open NSFW policy, and there’s a reason for that. In a new post, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg describes why Tumblr’s old “go nuts, show nuts” policy can’t work today:

https://photomatt.tumblr.com/post/696629352701493248/why-go-nuts-show-nuts-doesnt-work-in-2022

It all comes down to chokepoints and liability. It’s an open secret that Verizon’s Tumblr porn ban was triggered by Apple’s threat to block the Tumblr app for iOS users, in the name of preserving the App Store’s “child friendly” policy. Remember when Steve Jobs announced that “Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone?”

https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/

Google Play — the Android version of the App Store — is only slightly less adamant about blocking adult material. With the mobile duopoly dead set against adult content, an NSFW-friendly Tumblr would have to be web-only. Mullenweg explains why that’s not viable: “40% of our signups and 85% of our page views come from mobile apps.”

Now, it’s true that there are other apps for platforms with a lot of adult content that both app stores welcome (Reddit, Twitter). Mullenweg says “My guess is that Twitter and Reddit are too big for Apple to block so they decided to make an example out of Tumblr, which has ‘only’ 102 million monthly visitors.”

Though, he adds, “Maybe Twitter gets blocked by Apple sometimes too but can’t talk about it because they’re a public company and it would scare investors.”

Playing chicken with Apple’s App Store censors is a losing proposition. As Mullenweg describes, the interpretation of the App Store rules varies from day to day, depending on which person is evaluating your app. If you submit an app update, Apple might arbitrarily change its position on whether you’re crossing a line and block your app instead. When that happens, it’s a big deal. Mullenweg: “If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we’d probably have to shut the service down.”

But it’s not just the mobile duopoly that holds Tumblr’s future in its hands. Mullenweg actually ranks payment processors as more powerful than mobile companies. Credit-card companies hate porn. Adding adult content back to Tumblr threatens Automattic’s ability to process payments for all its services, from Wordpress hosting to ad-free Tumblr subscriptions. Without money, the company couldn’t last long, and its 2,000+ employees would be out of a job.

At this stage, Mullenweg anticipates a chorous of cryptocurrency enthusiasts claiming that the solution to this is to accept payment in cryptos. He heads them off. No matter whether you think crypto might solve this problem tomorrow, “today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy.”

But even if you bypass the mobile dupology and find a way to live without payment processing, setting up an adult-content-friendly site is still fraught. New rules (including SESTA/FOSTA) create civil and criminal liability for adult content hosting; as do rules against nonconsensual pornography (AKA “revenge porn”).

Mullenweg doesn’t want to host illegal adult content, not just because he doesn’t want to go to jail, but because he decries the odious trade in sexual material made without consent, featuring children, or other unsavory circumstances.

But today’s environment, filled as it is with networked pocket cameras, is fertile ground for the production of those materials. When anyone can produce sexual images, it becomes extremely difficult to establish whether everyone pictured is of age and consenting.

But even if Tumblr could hire the moderators it needed to make those determinations, it still wouldn’t be in the clear, because market concentration elsewhere in the stack makes operating an “adult content business” far harder than it was in Tumblr’s heyday.

Today, hosting adult content means finding specialized network connections, hosting, DDoS mitigation and more, because every layer of the “stack” of services other kinds of sites can rely on has been turning into an oligopoly with uniform anti-sex policies.

Paying for those specialized services is a problem, too, and not just because you will struggle to find a bank and credit-card company that will serve your business. Many investment funds are prohibited from investing in “vice” related businesses due to agreements with their own backers, and even the ones that can fund such a business choose not to.

Mullenweg sums up:

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money.

That’s a sobering conclusion, but even more striking is Mullenweg’s back-of-the-envelope calculations for what this would take:

> I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs.

Mullenweg closes with his hope that someone else will figure out how to “replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr,” but implies that for Tumblr itself, the best we can hope for are more baby-steps.

[Image ID: A Victorian pornographic illustration of a man in coat and neck cloth touching the exposed bottom of a grinning woman who is face down on a fainting-couch. The image forms the backdrop for an animation in which a grinning Tumblr logo bounces up and down over her bum.]

#pluralistic

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unearthitaly · 5 months

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Etiquette in Restaurants in Italy

Customs and circumstances are different according to the country and culture and it’s good to be aware of them in order not to offend nor misjudge people. Here following you can find a couple of "unwritten rules" on how to behave in restaurants while in Italy.

DON'T SIT AT A TABLE WITHOUT ASKING IF IT’S FREE

Unlike, for example, some areas of Germany, in Italy it’s common practice to ask the waiter where you can sit, even if there are plenty of free tables.

The best way to act is to ask: “ C'è posto per noi? Siamo in X persone” or “C’è posto per X persone?” (Is there place for X people?) and to let the waiter guide you to a suitable table. In this way you won’t sit at a reserved table nor occupy one which is set for more people. It’s a way to make the work easier for the restaurant. Obviously, if the place the waiter suggests doesn’t suit you, you can ask for an alternative.

DON'T MOVE TABLES AROUND

I’ve learned that in some countries it’s quite normal to move tables according to one’s preference or to put different tables together to accommodate a large party of people.

Just as stated in the previous point, ask the waiters before taking such initiatives. They might have different plans and, please, consider it might be deemed rude as you’re basically moving someone else’s furniture, after all.

DON'T EXPECT TO BE GIVEN THE BILL WITHOUT HAVING TO ASK FOR IT

This is a trap several Americans fall into by thinking waiters are unattentive. In Italy waiters are taught never to hand the bill before the customer is finished, as it’s considered extremely rude. You don’t want to give the customers the impression you want to rush them whatsoever.

Restaurants are not supposed to just amass as many people as possible, they are also supposed to provide an environment where patrons can relax and enjoy themselves. Waiters will give customers a time limit only if the table they’re sitting at is reserved afterwards.

Just enjoy your meal and ask for “Il conto perfavore” when you want to leave the restaurant.

Want to learn about more unwritten rules on how to behave in restaurants in Italy? Check the complete article here.

Sara - Unearth Italy. Find me on WordPress, Instagram and X.

#italian culture #italy #travel italy

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dreadfutures · 2 months

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1) "it's so scummy they rolled this out without telling anyone." They made an announcement, and have not yet gone through with a deal with any generative AI form. This is pre-deal. They're giving users a tool to opt out of that deal before it's made, UNLIKE Tumblr live. What else do you want? (No deal at all -- me too.)

2) You're opting out. Theoretically that should cover all your content on your blog and content you own/post, right? I don't think this requires deleting your art or your blogs. I mean if you don't want to be on a website that is partnered with AI at all, that is definitely a valid choice to make (like with DeviantArt and ArtStation), but I don't think panic about your stuff being scraped (more than it already has been) you must delete everything ahhhhh is the most reasonable reaction rn (which is all over my dash). You are opting out, and THEORETICALLY that means something. Again, for sure it's a rational decision if you principle-wise don't wanna be on a site that's going to work with AI companies, and for sure if you don't trust Tumblr. But that's principle, not panic over something theoretically they're giving us control of (yes I am also doubtful).

3) yeah this mcfuckin sucks. between not being able to host fanart and images ANYWHERE these days, to every hub or creativity and community allowing AI to feed on our souls, everything mcfucking sucks. I know and agree.

Edit:

Nope! they're covering their ass because they already fucked us, nevermind!

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delilahdesanges · 3 months

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[Publishing] Excitement, awe and terror

Yes, it is time to tremble, quake, and possibly do a nervous wee. Because Learning to be Human is now available to order in the US & Canada! It is, of course, already available in the UK. It is, I think you’ll agree, a saucy and well-constructed tome. If you decide you don’t like the stories (unlikely, there’s a huge variety stretching from the Iliad to me), you can always use this as a small…

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#book launch #books #Canada #creative #creativity #fiction #hobbies #publishing #sci fi #short stories #US #writing

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awkwardbotany · 2 months

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Another Year of Pollination: Viscin Threads

While we’re on the subject of pollen-gluing mechanisms, there is another material apart from pollenkitt that a limited number of flowering plant families use to link their pollen grains together. It functions, much like pollenkitt, by aiding in the attachment of pollen to visiting animals. However, unlike pollenkitt, it isn’t sticky, oily, or viscous, and is instead more like a series of threads.…

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#bees #birds #Caesalpinioideae #Ericaceae #flowers #fossil record #Lepidoptera #Oenothera #Onagraceae #plant anatomy #plant science research #pollen #pollen grains #pollenkitt #pollinators #Rhododendron #viscin threads #year of pollination

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izayoichan · 5 months

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The Future of The Ward Legacy

First; I am not stopping, but I am, remaking. The main reason is that I have wanted to move the story out of the Sims universe and free it from the "constraints" of the game itself. I have been trying to keep on writing the story here, the ones you see posted, and then find time and energy to work on the rewrite that I basically just began. I have however come to the simple conclusion, that unlike so many others on here who manage to tell several stories, I have to focus my non-existent energy most days on one thing. And I have chosen to want to rewrite the story. What that means is that my current queue (that runs until May 9th next year..) will run along like normal, while I focus my mind and energy on getting the rewrite going, and when that final post is done, I hope to have enough ready to start posting chapters on WordPress, and then link to them here. I don't think I will post it in any other way here. The images for my story will still be done with Sims so, I will still share screenshots, etc here like I am now, but they will just be the same as now, silly for fun kinda deal.

I know WordPress and longer reads are not for most anymore, but I want to do it that way, so I am! I'm enjoying writing it, as bad as I might be, but heck, I can only get better right?

#just a heads up #that the story will restart #and just be a story #not a sims story #I so need to figure out a million small things now #and I love it!

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jscalzi · 6 months

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Meanwhile, Krissy

It’s been a stretch since I’ve posted a picture of her here, which is, frankly, unlike me. Part of the reason is that I was away on book tour, but now I’ve been home for a whole two weeks, so I can only blame touring so much. Whatever the reason, it’s time to rectify this issue. Here she is. And, of course, she continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Which most of you knew. But…

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saintescuderia · 2 months

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How To Become A Writer?

Responses will vary. They all won’t answer you.

It happened when I started working full-time.

It’s interesting that — as soon as Teams calls and spreadsheets became a reality, the adjoining tabs open would have Google searches on how to become a writer.

The very question: how to become a writer? It’s funny to think that Google could’ve provided an answer to something writers themselves has been struggling to answer for the longest time. Every single Paris Review Interview provides a different response — albeit they all share the same trait of being philosophical, artistic and not at all straightforward.

The only straightforward thing I could find on how to become a writer was the Google-sponsored website of Medium. It seemed like this was the updated version of early 2000s blogging and Wordpress.

I had tried Wordpress. I had also given up on Wordpress.

And so I tried Medium. I shortly gave up on Medium.

It wasn’t due to the same reasons, though. Wordpress was confusing and isolating. Medium was easier and you already had articles to read before you noticed the little button to write your own. However, therein lay the problem: Medium gave me nowhere to hide. Was I fully ready to embrace it? Was I ready for my life to change? Eevery word I put out there has to be perfectly selected and crafted in my own original way that I am changing lives with each paragraph. No matter the fact that I don’t even know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. I just know that I need to do it.

The imposter syndrome got to me. No matter the inherent desire to do this — something existing since the days of waking up 5am before school to write fanfiction — I just couldn’t stay consistent.

During my brief Medium interlude last time, I did see a trend. People would try to build their following through writing consistently for 30 days. 90 days. It didn’t really matter. They ahd set a goal and wrote — and posted — consistently for that alloted amount of days.

I read some of those posts. They weren’t all life-changing. They weren’t philosophical or even artistic. But they were straightforward. They were here, I did it. It’s not great, but I showed up and did it anyway. If I think about what is missing from this, it’s that very thing. To get just get over myself and write badly because bad writing is inevitable.

So, here is my own 30 day challenge. I'm documenting this not just on Medium but also on the website that has had my back since the inception of my personality as a whole. Tumblr.

It may be odd to think that I am using Tumblr as a means to post my work and start to build up a portfolio, if you will. Tumblr's day has passed and it gave the likes of Rupi Kaur her platform back in 2010s - we've moved past that!

Sure. Neil Gaiman is still on here.

Also, unlike Wordpress or Wix or any of those other sites, the 10+ years I've spent on this forbidden 'hell-site' means I actually know how to use the damn thing. If we're going to embark on the journey of writing everyday, at least give me the past of least resistance. I know Tumblr.

Because, really, this is all so I can get out of the ivory tower that is every writer’s self-doubts and insecurities. Who knows, maybe I’ll start to figure out just what it is to be a writer.

(It also helps that F1 is back. That may or may not be a coincidence.)

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graphicpolicy · 1 month

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From the fall of the House of Brainiac to the countdown to Absolute Power, it's a packed June for Superman

From the fall of the House of Brainiac to the countdown to Absolute Power, it's a packed June for Superman #comics #comicbooks #superman

Superman, Lobo, and the Superman family take a stand against Brainiac and the Brainiac Queen in the finale to “House of Brainiac.” That leads into the anticipated summer event, Absolute Power. It’s all hands on deck in Action Comics #1066! Brainiac has created his masterpiece, and all bets are off as Superman and his teammates bear witness to a cosmic horror unlike anything they’ve ever seen!…

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togglesbloggle · 10 months

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This is an interesting time in the history of Social, on account of, the entire natural order undergirding our conception of social media has imploded and is taking our modern modes of engagement with it. (Which is to say, bearer bonds are paying interest again. Alas!)

It's a very 'open' moment in that way; there's a huge and well-known appetite for a specific kind of thing, but many of the existing systems designed to serve and exploit that appetite are in retreat. Big potential energy reservoirs with limited competition for resources! If you're feeling more poetic- the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.

The challenge, of course, is how to be one of the more successful monsters during the transition. If you play your cards right, they name the new era after you, it's a cushy gig if you can get it.

Many of the initial successor-attempts are trying to learn the lessons of 2005-2020 by emphasizing open protocols; these are common to Bluesky and Mastadon for Twitter refugees, the Matrix protocol for Element and other successors to Discord, and so on. And that's probably one of the more important choices that really are being made right now, in real time. Open, or closed?

Without as much cash flowing through the system, megaprojects and monoliths will be much harder to sustain. That's not necessarily a bad thing! We've gotten used to high-stakes struggles, we're all tangled up with the fates of a small number of huge institutions. Which sucks, right? It brings out the worst in us. Whereas open standards, such as the protocols we achieved for the internet as a whole, make that fight much harder to have at all. It builds a world more ordered towards democratic sensibilities and mutual respect. But there's no easy way to achieve that kind of victory. It takes genius, and good luck, and wisdom, and money, and all the other things.

One of my favorite discoveries from Discord (and, in retrospect, the BBS era) is that I personally really like social environments with a sense of 'place' to them. In my favorite servers, I'll often just hop on an empty voice chat and see if anybody else hops on to say hi, as a way of nucleating conversation. People can come and go at leisure, like being in a particular circle of conversation at a party. It's genuinely like 'hanging out', in a way that can't be replicated by flat and wide platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which in the absence of 'place' become a sort of public-performance status competition by default. Boundaries between small communities often make the difference between being a guy and being a brand; even on Tumblr, it's really more the latter than the former even as we build a sort of proto-community with our mutuals.

When I imagine my sort of 'ideal internet of the future', I think it looks something like a more porous, discoverable, and interconnected Discord: individual mixed-media real-time communication platforms with a specific members list and some ad-hoc internal structure to order conversations. But unlike Discord, these servers could look like something 'on the outside' if they wanted to, capable (though not required) by design of something much like a webpage, including links to other such webpages and other forms of discoverability. Temporary visitors would have free access to any curated digital products of that community placed on the page (including rights to copy, but with attribution baked in to the file format), with a smooth and community-defined onboarding from 'visitor' to 'member' that would vary according to the needs of the community in question. A bit like wordpress, these pages would have basic templates for nontechnical users but give you full access to webdev tools if you wanted them; but they would also give users full control over the entire contents of the server iff the users wanted that level of control, up to and including migrating a server to a member's locally-owned machine. The real-time members-only guts of the server would of course be end-to-end encrypted, such that these communities would have real and meaningful self-ownership.

I kind of like this because it creates a very smooth gradient with "IRC chat room" on one end and "Just A Website" on the other, but with the ability to evolve smoothly between them in real time, and with a very easy 'entry point' for novices and normies that could gradually grow towards a professional programming/webdev level of expertise if interest grows. And there's plenty of room for 'open/flat' curation of content in the manner of traditional Facebooky and Twittery social media, but people would be interacting with it through the intermediary of this 'server' abstraction, which would hopefully blunt the worst of the evils- we'd be individuals in private communities, but fictive mini-institutions when exposed to the wider world. And that same functionality could be used for projects like the Internet Archives or AO3 that are oriented towards the preservation of sometimes controversial materials, as cultures and moderators in individual servers changed.

#I do expect we'll lose Tumblr within a few years #hard to see any way around it #I will sincerely grieve for it

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