Sometimes I’m Disappointed In My Family Because We’re Pretty Boring Or Sometimes Not Because Once

what can be smooth but also rough ;)))))

Hi Tumblr—

We’ve heard from a bunch of you that Safe Mode was filtering posts from the LGBTQ+ community even though they were completely innocuous and totally safe-for-work. Please know that was never our intention, and we appreciate you letting us know so quickly—and forcefully! We’re deeply sorry. Tumblr will always be a place where everyone is welcome and protected, so we want to explain what happened.

The major issue was some Tumblrs had marked themselves as Adult/NSFW (now Explicit) as a courtesy to their fellow users, and their perfectly safe posts were getting marked sensitive unintentionally. That should never have happened. We’re sorry.

We’re making some changes that should improve things:

Changes to self-marked blogs

What was happening: Because we consider Explicit blogs to be predominantly sensitive content, we were automatically marking all their posts as sensitive. That was too broad.

What we fixed: Now each post is classified individually. As they should be.

Changes to reblog chains

What was happening: If an Explicit Tumblr reblogged a safe post, we were marking that reblog as sensitive. This was even happening to text posts. Which is silly. 

What we fixed: We changed the logic so that if the OP is safe, all its reblogs will also be safe.

Changes to photosets 

What’s (still) happening: When you make a photo post, a computer algorithm classifies the image as safe or sensitive. It’s a machine so it’s not perfect. And the chances go up with photosets because there are multiple images. But out of an abundance of caution we keep posts marked sensitive until the OP requests a human review (by tapping the appeal button on their posts).

What we’re working on: We plan to have photosets analyzed as a whole group, rather than as individual images. That should reduce the number of mistakes the machine makes.

Safe Mode is supposed to make sure people aren’t surprised by things may not want to see—specifically, nudity. It might take some time to get it perfect, but we’re committed to getting there with your help. Our algorithms will keep getting smarter as you give feedback on misclassified posts, and as you share your concerns and suggestions.

❤️

writing-prompt-s:

Valhalla does not discriminate against the kind of fight you lost. Did you lose the battle with cancer? Maybe you died in a fist fight. Even facing addiction. After taking a deep drink from his flagon, Odin slams his cup down and asks for the glorious tale of your demise!

Oh my god, this is beautiful.

A small child enters Valhalla. The battle they lost was “hiding from an alcoholic father.” Odin sees the flinch when he slams the cup and refrains from doing it again. He hears the child’s pain; no glorious battle this, but one of fear and wretched survival.

He invites the child to sit with him, offers the choicest mead and instructs his men to bring a sword and shield, a bow and arrow, of the very best materials and appropriate size. “Here,” he says, “you will find no man who dares to harm you. But so you will know your own strength, and be happy all your days in Valhalla, I will teach you to use these weapons.”

The sad day comes when another child enters the hall. Odin does not slam his cup; he simply beams with pride as the first child approaches the newcomer, and holds out her bow and quiver, and says “nobody here will hurt you. Everyone will be so proud you did your best, and I’ll teach you to use these, so you always know how strong you are.”

————

A young man enters the hall. He hesitates when Odin asks his story, but at long last, it ekes out: skinheads after the Pride parade. His partner got into a building and called for help. The police took a little longer than perhaps they really needed to, and two of those selfsame skinheads are in the hospital now with broken bones that need setting, but six against one is no fair match. The fear in his face is obvious: here, among men large enough to break him in two, will he face an eternity of torment for the man he left behind?

Odin rumbles with anger. Curses the low worms who brought this man to his table, and regales him with tales of Loki so to show him his own welcome. “A day will come, my friend, when you seek to be reunited, and so you shall,” Odin tells him. “To request the aid of your comrades in battle is no shameful thing.”

———-

A woman in pink sits near the head of the table. She’s very nearly skin and bones, and has no hair. This will not last; health returns in Valhalla, and joy, and light, and merrymaking. But now her soul remembers the battle of her life, and it must heal.

Odin asks.

And asks again.

And the words pour out like poisoned water, things she couldn’t tell her husband or children. The pain of chemotherapy. The agony of a mastectomy, the pain still deeper of “we found a tumor in your lymph nodes. I’m so sorry.” And at last, the tortured question: what is left of her?

Odin raises his flagon high. “What is left of you, fair warrior queen, is a spirit bright as fire; a will as strong as any forged iron; a life as great as any sea. Your battle was hard-fought, and lost in the glory only such furor can bring, and now the pain and fight are behind you.“

In the months to come, she becomes a scop of the hall–no demotion, but simple choice. She tells the stories of the great healers, Agnes and Tanya, who fought alongside her and thousands of others, who turn from no battle in the belief that one day, one day, the war may be won; the warriors Jessie and Mabel and Jeri and Monique, still battling on; the queens and soldiers and great women of yore.

The day comes when she calls a familiar name, and another small, scarred woman, eyes sunken and dark, limbs frail, curly black hair shaved close to her head, looks up and sees her across the hall. Odin descends from his throne, a tall and foaming goblet in his hands, and stuns the hall entire into silence as he kneels before the newcomer and holds up the goblet between her small dark hands and bids her to drink.

“All-Father!” the feasting multitudes cry. “What brings great Odin, Spear-Shaker, Ancient One, Wand-Bearer, Teacher of Gods, to his knees for this lone waif?”

He waves them off with a hand.

“This woman, LaTeesha, Destroyer of Cancer, from whom the great tumors fly in fear, has fought that greatest battle,” he says, his voice rolling across the hall. “She has fought not another body, but her own; traded blows not with other limbs but with her own flesh; has allowed herself to be pierced with needles and scored with knives, taken poison into her very veins to defeat this enemy, and at long last it is time for her to put her weapons down. Do you think for a moment this fight is less glorious for being in silence, her deeds the less for having been aided by others who provided her weapons? She has a place in this great hall; indeed, the highest place.”

And the children perform feats of archery for the entertainment of all, and the women sing as the young man who still awaits his beloved plays a lute–which, after all, is not so different from the guitar he once used to break a man’s face in that great final fight.

Valhalla is a place of joy, of glory, of great feasting and merrymaking.

And it is a place for the soul and mind to heal.

Shit

OMG… SIGNAL BOOST FOR sixpenceee SHE NEEDS TO SEE THIS POST!

Soo! I don’t know if yoy know about this… But apparently there’s a channel on Youtube that posts the STRANGEST AND CREEPYEST VIDEOS I’VE SEEN! The tension and the fear on all his videos is just… TOO REAL. And the worst thing, is, that all this is apparently REAL!  Supposedly this is the channel of a guy who bought a set of old cassetes on a garage sale for $5. One day he gets too curious and wants to see what the betamaxes contains! And he gets so freaked with what he sees that he decides to digitalize and post what he found. The guy describes the story like this “These are movies that we found in 10 rather large boxes at an estate sale for 5 bucks a box. It was being held in a barn about 15 miles west of Austin TX. There were some old records (which we also bought) some rusted tools, tons of paint cans, various other bits of old useless junk, and these boxes. The people running the estate sale didn’t seem to know that they were there and priced them for us on the spot. The films vary in formats ranging from old 35mm stock reels to betamax. We also see what seem to be the same people recurring in these movies as well. Many of the films are damaged beyond repair but we are trying our best to repair and clean them up. As we dig through the boxes, catalog, and digitize more videos and audio we will post more. Until then please share with us what you think might be going on with these tapes.” This is the link to the channel! https://www.youtube.com/user/Foundmedia23/videos And above is a little taste of what the channel contains. SO FREAKY MAN… I’M FUCKING TERRIFIED.

I ran home and drew this on my lunchbreak because I felt like my world would explode if I didn’t. Thanks, Carrie Fisher, for teaching me that girls like us can be princesses, generals, or whatever we want to be. #RIPCarrie

People can’t anticipate how much they’ll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense “periscope liberty” - a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines - and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple of days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. “A baby!” he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran. Nothing tops space as a barren, unnatural environment. Astronauts who had no prior interest in gardening spend hours tending experimental greenhouses. “They are our love,” said cosmonaut Vladislav Volkov of the tiny flax plants - with which they shared the confines of Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station. At least in orbit, you can look out the window and see the natural world below. On a Mars mission, once astronauts lose sight of Earth, they’ll be nothing to see outside the window. “You’ll be bathed in permanent sunlight, so you won’t eve see any stars,” astronaut Andy Thomas explained to me. “All you’ll see is black.”

Mary Roach. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. 

This is a really interesting read - it’s got a lot of information that I would never have thought to think of (such as - will astronauts eyeballs become different shapes without gravity - weird), but it also has really good chapters about the psychology of space. 

(via psycholar)

reblog if you think animation, photography, theatre, music, image editing, video editing, and creative writing are all forms of art

the amount of people that think these aren’t art forms angers me

reblogging because i like fish

To kill the health bill:

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s staff says what would help THE MOST is calling the five Republican senators who have broken away from the GOP in an attempt to slow down the healthcare repeal. Tell them how much you appreciate their efforts and urge them to vote against the bill: Senator Bob Corker - (202) 224-3344 Senator Lisa Murkowski - (202) 224-6665 Senator Rob Portman - (202) 224-3353 Senator Susan Collins - (202) 224-2523 Senator Bill Cassidy - (202) 224-5824

Signal Boost?