The 3 Stages Of A Cat Yawn

imagine… Alma Deutscher: Finding Cinderella

Musical prodigy Alma Deutscher aged 11 (seen here with younger sister Helen), is staging her first full-length opera, Cinderella.

Composer, pianist, violinist… Alma learned to read music before she could read words. She began playing the piano aged two and at four years old she was composing her own music.

America's first urban 'agrihood' feeds 2,000 households for free

The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is debuting a sustainable urban agrihood in Detroit, and are transforming an abandoned building into a community center.

When you think of Detroit, ‘sustainable‘ and ‘agriculture‘ may not be the first two words that you think of. But a new urban agrihood debuted by The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) might change your mind. The three-acre development boasts a two-acre garden, a fruit orchard with 200 trees, and a sensory garden for kids.

If you need a refresher on the definition of agrihood, MUFI describes it as an alternative neighborhood growth model. An agrihood centers around urban agriculture, and MUFI offers fresh, local produce to around 2,000 households for free.

In a statement, MUFI co-founder and president Tyson Gersh said, “Over the last four years, we’ve grown from an urban garden that provides fresh produce for our residents to a diverse, agricultural campus that has helped sustain the neighborhood, attracted new residents and area investment.” Through urban agriculture, MUFI aims to solve problems Detroit residents face such as nutritional illiteracy and food insecurity.

Now in the works at the agrihood is a 3,200 square foot Community Resource Center. Once a vacant building, the center will become a colorful headquarters and education center. As MUFI is a non-profit operated by volunteers, they’ll receive a little help to restore the building from chemistry company BASF and global community Sustainable Brands. Near the center, a health food cafe will sprout on empty land.

MUFI describes the agrihood as America’s first sustainable urban agrihood. There are other agrihoods around the United States, such as this one Inhabitat covered earlier in 2016 in Davis, California. But the California agrihood is expensive; many people couldn’t afford to live there. The Michigan agrihood is far more accessible.

MUFI isn’t stopping with the community center. They’re also working on a shipping container home, and plan to restore another vacant home to house interns. A fire-damaged house near the agrihood will be deconstructed, but the basement will be turned into a water harvesting cistern to irrigate the farm.

I think the problem with email vs social media is the amount of people you reach. I remember in one of my communications classes, my teacher said that email wasn’t a mass media, it was more of a private one. That makes it a little harder, but I do think it’s worth looking into 

Protect your blogs and content my friends, tumblr is going to crash and burn at this rate

A better, more positive Tumblr

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio CEO

Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.

the secret cheat code for women is realizing you dont have to date men

About Me

My name is Micha, I’m 16 years old. I am non-binary, and use they/them/theirs. I am not new to tumblr, nor it’s drama, and have created this as an outlet for my thoughts and feelings. I hope to post regularly here, and look forward to using this platform once more - but this time with more purpose. 

The reason I chose my username (write-dreamer-survivor) is because it is who I am in three words. Writer. I am a writer, and that is one of the biggest aspects of who I am. I will always write, whether it be poetry, plays, or novellas. Dreamer. I am a dreamer, I dream of so many things - falling in love, getting married, becoming a well known author. I dream of a future where humanity can be at peace. Survivor. I am a survivor of sexual assault, self-harm, and depression. It’s an ongoing struggle, but I will continue to fight as I have for the past years. 

I am by no means important or influential, but I do hope to make a positive impact on the world in some way. Hopefully this blog can be a part of that. I look forward to a future with all of you in it. 

snug like a bug in a rug

Can these directors please learn to use dark palettes without making all the details in the shots imperceiveable? I can’t fucking see!!!

I know there is gender dyshporia, but that leads me to wondering what other types of dysphoria there are. Species dysphoria, I’m sure, is one of them. Sometimes - often, lately -  I feel like I’m experiencing it, feel like I don’t belong to the human race. I’m not sure what race I belong to, who my mother nor my sire are. 

I look back and we come from Ireland, and I’m curious to know if I’m a Fae from Celtic mythology, if I was born as part of the Seelie or Unseelie Courts - but I can’t know, because to my knowledge I’m human. It sucks to be human, you don’t have special powers, no one doubts your existence - no one has a firm and hopeful faith in you appearing to them. 

I exist as nonbinary. Around me I see men, and women, and boys, and girls - I see transitioning genders, I see a binary all around me that I exist outside of. I feel like a creature in a world of humans, trying to blend in, calling myself one thing to one side and another thing to the other, and I feel torn. Do I say I’m nonbinary, and risk rejection or mocking? Or do I say I’m a boy, and risk almost the same thing. 

Maybe there’s a monster burning inside me, aching to get out and wreak havoc. To consume people and rip them apart, paint with their blood and keep their eyes as pretty little trophies. I don’t know what I feel the impulse to do half of the time, just that I don’t because it would hurt others. I know that I do have that side of myself where the impulses come from, where my animalistic thoughts reside. I know I can’t ever let those out, lest I lose everything I care for.  

mumble’s story is an inherently gay narrative