Hey so @staff it’s really really shitty to flag as explicit a post about my gay uncle who died due to AIDS.
@staff this is unacceptable
Thank you. I didn’t even see a notification – I just came across it while I was scrolling through my blog to see if anything was flagged.
I’m honestly pretty upset about this. It’s also wild considering the history of the AIDS epidemic and how the US government censored PSAs about the epidemic to not mention gay men because it might be seen as endorsing “deviant” behavior. I’m not saying that’s why this was flagged, I’m just saying there’s relevant history here.
Wow. I’m so sorry this happened to your post.
When people ask what we’re so worried about with the new policy this is the answer.
some context for yahoo’s excellent product management that not a lot of people know about:
remember yahoo instant messenger? i’m guessing basically everyone stopped using that after like the early 2000s. but until about two years ago, almostall of the world’s oil trading was conducted through yahoo instant messenger. every day hundreds of millions of barrels, billions of dollars in equity, was traded by a bunch of dudes through yahoo instant messenger. traders and brokers loved that they could be speaking with tons of people at once, and their compliance officers loved that there was a transcript of conversations and deals left behind for auditing and regulatory purposes.
but yahoo decided, perhaps reasonably on the surface, that they did not want to support this service anymore. they wanted to migrate the messaging platform onto something a bit more integrated and 21st century. except their new service was not compatible with any kind of conversation-recording capability, so traders would not be allowed to use it anymore for compliance purposes.
chaos. billion dollar companies all around the world were scrambling. how would they conduct their business? i know this sounds silly, but traders talk to hundreds of people a day, brokers are showing them markets all day long. phones are inefficient and not all are set to record. they explained to yahoo what the compliance issue was. they offered to pay – these companies can afford any kind of subscription necessary. they assured yahoo that a massive pillar of the world’s economy, as fucking insane as it sounds, is actually conducted through their service. just let us use it. (here’s a reuters article about it, and here’s a financial times article on it)
yahoo didn’t change its plans.
now everyone uses something else to trade the world’s oil.
By the by, just so we’re clear, this was a post-acquisition thing. Verizon bought Yahoo two months before they annoucned YIM’s cancellation.
One I ran across on Twitter, and clicked through out of curiosity since that just didn’t sound right.
How did they get that number in the headline?
Thirty eight volunteers targeted hotspots around the borough such as the town centre, railway stations and the local hospital on Thursday night (December 29) and encountered just two rough sleepers…
“However, this was just one night and the council know of at least 12 people sleeping rough.“
I can well imagine that not everyone in that situation would want to deal with the council, or these volunteers going around getting nosy. I doubt I would gladly talk to them. Twelve still sounds very low for the whole borough, and I have personally repeatedly seen more than two street homeless people hanging around just Romford Station most nights. Doesn’t sound like they were even looking that hard.
Also from the same person quoted there, Councillor Joshua Chapman, cabinet member for housing:
“It’s also important to note that not everyone chooses to accept the help or accommodation offered by the council.
“We have actively sought out rough sleepers to make them aware that help is available but unfortunately in some instances they have turned down offers of support.”
I was trying to find an old post discussing exactly that in more detail. But, if people would rather sleep on the street (in this climate, no less) than make use of whatever help/support you’re offering? Maybe you should listen to what will actually serve their needs, instead of getting snotty about it.
They’ve supposedly had to stop doing that to EU-connected immigrants, but would I trust the local council or charity groups given the political climate these days? Hmm.
Anyway, I wasn’t that surprised at the overall slant of the piece, because politics.
What did surprise me some, though?
Investigation work carried out by the Recorder revealed that at least three homeless people have died in the borough in the last year, however no records of their deaths have been kept, and data released by charity Shelter shows that an additional 490 people are now homeless in Havering since the November 2017 figure of 1,956.
Of the 2,446 currently homeless, research shows 22 are rough sleepers and the remaining 2,424 are living in temporary accommodation.
This means one in 105 people are now homeless in Havering, up from one in 129 last year.
(So, now we’re up to 22 official rough sleepers instead of 12? 🤔)
Again, I would be surprised if that weren’t a low estimate. Those figures do include people living in temporary accommodations, couch surfing, etc. But still, somewhere around 1% of people living in this borough are now homeless.
(And this still isn’t as high as some others. One neighboring borough was in the top 10 as of last year, and I really doubt this has improved any more than it has here.)
I knew the situation had been getting worse for any number of reasons, but I didn’t realize just how high the rates had gotten. Or how sharply they’d increased within just a year. And this is before whatever else happens with the ongoing Brexit shitshow.
This dissertation seeks to show that charities for homeless people have a duty to address disability, and that these charities fail to do so even though more than half of homeless people are disabled people.
The duty to address compliance with disability legislation is examined briefly, and the logical implication that disability among the beneficiaries of a charity must first be recognised is stated.
Two surveys were done to illustrate that more than half of homeless people are disabled people. In contrast, 16% of Britain’s population are disabled people, with a spending power of £80 billion per annum.
A computer search of disability, poverty and homelessness literature was done to find direct links between disability and homelessness. No such links could be found, illustrating that disability and homelessness are not conceptually linked in theory or common practice.
The causes of homelessness were examined, and the question raised whether many of these ‘causes’ of homelessness are directly linked to disability. Might disability poverty cause someone to be unable to meet rent payments, so that “rent not paid” is not the actual cause of homelessness. The causes of homelessness were examined in the light of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
In conclusion I recommend that disability and Homelessness charities seriously examine the links between disability and homelessness, and that University graduates in Disability Studies are appointed to the board as Disability Officers, where they should hold no other portfolio.
I recommend that the leaders in charity governance alter governance methods and objectives in such a way that an awareness of disability and homelessness will filter through to grassroots levels, and permeate our society, as happened in the case of blind people, who are no longer homeless people. If this happens people with unseen disabilities will also cease to be homeless.
I also remembered running across this site several years ago, and managed to track it down again. The author (who also got this foundation going) became homeless for disability-related reasons, and was only able to get off the street after managing to access some services. Funny how that works.
And until I ran across some of his commentary, I hadn’t been aware of some of the bass-ackward discourse around these issues which is apparently too common in the UK. I was more familiar with the US versions going on about the failures of deinstitutionalization causing people to end up on the street, which are often disturbing enough in some other ways.
Never had I run across an approach based on the idea that existing systems are just so great that surely nobody could end up homeless because of disability! Being homeless just coincidentally causes a lot of health problems. (Which is probably also true, but yeah. That’s really unlikely to help the condition of somebody who is already disabled.)
That would indeed be in a political context where “one-third of Autistic adults in the UK have neither employment nor access to benefits” (*raises hand*), and “[r]ates of autism among the homeless population are 3000% to 6000% higher than in the general population”. As just one example. (Another cause of autism: homelessness! 😐 )
It’s kind of a mess, all around–and of course not just here. With the current austerity climate, trying to help get homeless people who need it access to disability services would have to be an even harder proposition, down to things as simple as disabled travelcards. But, glad somebody saw the need.
Ran across this while looking for something else, and it’s unfortunately more relevant all the time.
Reminded again of one story from our drama teacher in high school, which I thought was pretty funny then and appreciate in some different ways now.
She grew up in Baltimore, and got a rather startling introduction to some cultural differences not that long after moving to a small town in Southwest Virginia to take a teaching job.
One day, she looked out and saw some guy just casually walking down the street, carrying a shotgun. And…nobody else seemed to notice or care? There was certainly no screaming or sirens. It was very weird.
At least she did take a cue from the total lack of alarm from some neighbors who were out in their yard, and didn’t call the cops herself. But, you couldn’t have paid her to go out there for a while, just in case.
Definitely not in Baltimore anymore!
Yeah, my automatic assumption in that case would be that he was probably taking it to show a friend, or something like that. Barely worth noticing unless the person is acting squirrelly. Just not something I would have been that surprised to see.
But yeah, very different experiences and expectations in Hillbillyland compared to most urban areas and some other parts of the country.
Not too surprisingly, I’ve ended up disconcerted in the other direction on multiple occasions since moving to Greater London.
Including when my uncle and his family came for a visit when I’d been here a couple of years.
While they were doing touristy stuff, they went to the London Eye. And everyone involved got a bit of a surprise when they went through security to get in, and my baby cousin (probably 15 at that point) pulled out a totally standard pocket knife to leave there if they insisted.
I think that may have even been the same model (with under a 4" blade). Like I said, a very standard type of pocket knife back home. I was mostly surprised he was the only one of the family carrying one that day, because they’re handy tools and that’s just kinda what you do, but yeah. (And honestly I still usually do, aware that someone might eventually turn it into an issue. ETA: Though that’s less likely to happen, not being a young man.)
The security guy just couldn’t believe that (a) a kid had this Big Scary Knife at all, and (b) his crazy American family didn’t seem at all concerned about it. In the end, they didn’t totally confiscate the knife, but he did get some stern warnings to leave it wherever they were staying from now on. Which I think he actually did, because jfc.
They were amused afterwards, to say the least. I wasn’t along that day, but I can imagine.
It was kind of a dick move to create animals that require air, then confine them to the freaking ocean
If you are talking about dolphins they used to be wolf like creatures that due to scarcity of food they had to hunt in water so they slowly evolved into water mammals, dolphins still have claw bones but they are unnecessary and dolphins will get rid of them with time and will develop abilities to breath under water
(This also partially applies to whales)
They were what now?
Mother Nature, come out here I just want to talk
Whales are actually Ungulates, more so hippos, entelodons, etc…
Meaning they were somewhat related to big celebrities such as Daedon (the “hell pig”) and Andrewsarchus.
The appearence of the first ancestors of whales probably looked like a small hoofed thing called Indohyus.
(Illustration by julio lacerda)
(illustration by Tiffany Turill)
Basically they went from tiny hoofed herbivore to bigger hoofed carnivore to crocodile-like thing to seal-like things to big sea predators.
It’s important to mention that we now know dolphins will probably never need to develop true water breathing, because the fact that they breathe air from the surface is actually an ADVANTAGE for them. They get more oxygen at once than an animal with gills and it permits a much higher, more energized activity level for longer periods of time.
They are murderous monsters empowered by their access to the forbidden air
Also “no adult content” sounds good in theory until you actually think about it and then,, like, you realise it poses a huge threat to the blogs on here that
A) provide better sex ed than most school systems around the world
B) general open, healthy dialogue re: BDSM and safe practise
C) particularly for groups who are desexualised or made to guilty for having desires like disabled, trans or autistic people
D) the blogs that make artwork as a form of protest, usually involving nudity as expression
and tbh I could go on but I’m tired and my soul has just had another 100 years added to it
In theory, the crackdown shouldn’t affect any of those things. In practice, dinosaurs and puppies…
I didn’t see the screenshot of the puppies somebody mentioned, so don’t know if they were real puppies or drawn.
Either way, there IS no better AI tumblr can use. This is literally the state of research on AI flagging of porn.
That’s why we need to contest falsely flagged posts. Contested posts will be looked at with real human eyes that can clearly tell the difference between an illustrated puppy and human pornography.
Tumblr isn’t going to stop using flag bots because it’s cost-prohibitive to have human beings look at every single visual post, but the only way the bots can improve is if they are able to feed it better curated learning sets.
It’s not fair and it’s causing a gross amount of panic among people who don’t deserve this backlash, but it’s what’s happening and if we ever want to see a day where consensual visual adult content is allowed again without also enabling pedophiles to disseminate child pornography, the only hope is to help them improve their moderation algorithms.
Except we won’t. They won’t backpedal from this one. I’m not disagreeing that we shouldn’t contest every single falsely flagged post. But it won’t achieve that result.
Contest EVERY post. If they’re going to put us through this aggravation, turn around and put it back on them.
Zoom in on her face in the third gif. She means this. You are completely irreplaceable.
This went deep man. Look at her face. I would love to know where this came from, what she was talking about. And it’s true. So true. Completely irreplaceable. You are you and there is no better you
Reblogging because I needed to see this message tonight, and something tells me someone else does too.
Reblogging as I think every one of my followers are special and impossible to replace.
Remember that.
You are all special and important, and Ellen is a gift.
On my goods days, I’m like: “Thanks, Ellen. You’re such a treasure. Thank-you for supporting positive mental health. I hardly even get a chance to watch your show, but small gestures like this are so important and so reaffirming. Thanks.”
On my bad days,I’m like: “Thanks, Ellen. You’re such a treasure. But you don’t know me, and I am highly-replaceable trash. Thanks, anyway.”
You aren’t trash. Just an irreplaceable person having a bad day.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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