Recently, Tumblr was removed from the Apple app store due to an incident involving child pornography. This incident is incredibly unfortunate, but it doesn’t stand alone. Tumblr was also removed from the app store due to the large influx of porn bots and pornographic spam, users claiming to be proud to be pedophiles, blatant Nazism, racists who are not deleted for sending hate and harassing users, and more. I myself reported someone for harassing me, but because I had blocked the person and couldn’t access the messages where they harassed me, they were still able to send me anonymous asks. Your support staff, with back doors to the website (presumably), claimed they could not access the messages, and I was left SOL. Many features on this website do nothing to actually protect your users from harassment, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Nazis, pedophiles, predators, porn bots, and more.
You claim in your statement to us that you “have been working on these problems for a long time”. This is blatantly untrue. Please do not lie to us and patronize us. We’ve been here. We’ve seen you do nothing over, and over, and over again.
We complained to you for months and months about the rampant porn bots, and you did nothing except add a report button on mobile which only reported sensitive content or spam at best. You could have addressed this problem with an effective algorithm, but you did not. We complained to you about being harassed and sent hate speech for being LGBT+, and you did nothing. We complained to you about blogs being randomly deleted, and sometimes you’ve restored them, other times you have not. We complained to you that there were people proudly claiming to be “Minor Attracted Persons”, or pedophiles, and you did nothing. We complained to you about people proudly claiming to be white supremacists, and you did nothing. All of these things are “against the community guidelines”, and yet over and over, you have not found effective ways to handle these problems or suppress the feeling of welcome that these users claim to get here. You have had a long time to work on these problems, but you haven’t addressed them. To say you have is untrue.
Multiple other social networking websites, such as WordPress, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and others have effectively dealt with rampant pornography, racism, pedophilia, and other problems without causing massive issues for their users who are not misusing the platform. They are continuing to find new, effective ways to deal with these issues without causing problems for their userbase as a whole. There is no reason that you are unable to do this effectively other than that you wanted to do it quickly. You have once again chosen your stock holders over your users. And we have had enough.
You have already started to ban “Adult” content with a new algorithm. Here are screenshots of just a fraction of the posts you have flagged as containing adult content:
Your new system of simply tackling everything at once is not working. At all. And each of these screenshots is proof of your utter incompetence. None of these posts contain pornographic acts, “female nipples”, or any community violation of any kind.
We, the users, have been asking you for months to deal with these problems – particularly, the porn bots and bots that spam. In order to block a bot from a side blog, I have to do it manually, even though they are in my side blog’s feed. This is a huge issue for mobile – only users. They keep cropping up in droves, taking over our posts and tricking google into making it look like a legitimate blog linked to a pornographic website. We have complained to you for months and months now, and your solution to simply “ban all adult content” is ineffective. I agree that children should not be able to access pornography – but this is not how you tackle a porn bot problem. Your system is utterly useless, allows for racists, pedophiles, porn bots, and Nazis to remain untouched. It also harms sex workers and real people who may use this website for some forms of adult content responsibly. Moreover, as seen above, it harms plenty of users who have in no way violated your terms of service.
If you keep this up, you threaten your website and company as a whole. Many of us are backing up our blogs and planning places to go to.
You already have a content filter for “sensitive” content (content inappropriate for younger viewers). You could have improved this, instead of attacking your entire user base. It seems to be a very lazy “solution”, if you could call it one at all, and one that harms your entire userbase.
If you are going to keep this filter in place and make Tumblr, a website that has never been known for being family friendly and has never claimed to be, you are going to lose millions of your users. We are already planning our exodus. It isn’t hard to follow. Censor us, and we will go somewhere else. That is not a threat. It is a promise.
This made me have to
think a bit as some OCs aren’t entirely clear to me what they would be into;
Terra
Short/Mid
distance races, arm wrestling, kickboxing / mixed martial arts, Volleyball. She likes a good mix of brawn and agility/speed for her athletic fun.
Harriet
Swimming races
(idk which kind… maybe freestyle??), free diving, Dance sports (initially
thought ballet but now I’m not so sure… either way a dance sport with a lot of
spins and exaggerated movement would be her taste), theater/acting (neither a
game or sport- but still). Harriet loves water but she also loves to show off and stroke her ego as the center of attention.
Demauria
Archery,
possibly clay pigeon shooting (some kind of shooting sport that needs
speed/precision at least), parkour(??? I’m surprised at this thought but ok
sure), fencing, possibly Hockey. Demauria can be a bit brutish but she likes accuracy for the most part. While I’m still going “???” at parkour, I could see her being into it more than Terra; in comparison to Dema, Terra much prefers her feet firmly on the ground.
Riivar
Tango dancing (obviously),
theater/acting, singing/karaoke, card games (as to what specific ones I’m not
sure… but the kind that use a basic standard card deck). She likes Style™ and definitely enjoys putting her lungs to use. I’ve always imagined Riivar as a bit of a clever character, so games reflecting that I think would suit her.
Anne
Strength Athletics, arm wrestling and/or maybe wrestling (? Canon Anne would probably be interested but I’m not as
sure that AU Annes’ would be into it). It’s surprisingly hard for me to think
of any games/sports that’d be her taste… and cooking/baking doesn’t really
count as either. Anne is capable of much brawn, but she’s quite brainy too, so I think it’d take me a bit to figure out something that would reflect both characteristics to tickle her fancy?
Kayla
she doesn’t like
to do sports, though she is capable of weightlifting despite her appearance (I doubt that goes beyond Canon Kayla though. I imagine most AU Kaylas tend to be average if not the least bit athletic, and hence not liking the sports even more). She’d be probably into most kids games as well as basic board games
(ex- red rover, red light, hide and go seek, checkers, tic tac toe), perhaps even video games for AU Kaylas (most group-based games like Mario Kart, Smash Bros, as well as maybe dating games and games like Harvest Moon). Kayla while able to appreciate skill-based sports she doesn’t really like participating in such sports, and I see her as being one who just wants to have fun and has trouble doing that with skillsports.
For other OCs like Abby, Lily, or Laurel I have currently no idea.
After browsing/scouring through that inaturalist app I discovered that in fact, there are sightings/documentations of several plant species for my locality (just not groundnut vine of course) on the app. What’s interesting is the fact most of the species are ones I would not the least bit expect to exist anywhere in my county, said surprising species include;
Checking the map, it appears that some are not only in this county, but are not far from some of the closestby towns, PLUS potentially Ellice Swamp (you can’t map marker THAT close to Gadshill with wetland species and NOT be referring to Ellice Swamp). It is also interesting to note that some species were NOT on the county’s map sightings (Christmas Fern and Canadian Hemlock being the big two, almost concerning me just a bit).
Most of these species I’ve listed I’d only be able to find in spring or summer, not to mention most of them are absolutely-do-not-collect/touch plants whether due to sensitivity/rarity and/or just because they are on biologically protected land (The sundew and the orchids I can say that with an absolute certainty; do not even touch, even seedpods are off limits).
That being said though, seeing some of these species listed for this county gives me some hope that I may one day find them in some local woodlots (Claytonia and Green Dragon being the ones I’m holding the most hope for; their habitat preferences tend to overlap Trillium and Jack in the Pulpit territories in most ecological data). The do-not-touch species tbh I would just enjoy to just see with my own eyes and I’d be satisfied. Guess we’ll see in the future won’t we?
im still working on that paper on government regulations of GMO crops and its just…..really fascinating. i feel like i just….wasn’t very well informed about exactly how these plants interact with environment and with people before, although ive heard vague arguments about legality and possible dangers one way or the other tossed back and forth a lot. the regulation in a legal sense is done by USDA APHIS under title 7, chapter 104 (the Plant Protection Act), and it’s very messy and very interesting. for example, i’ve heard a lot about the ‘intellectual property’ legal case with Monstanto, but i just learned about the supreme court case Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, which concerns the actual regulation of some of these products.
background: the issue in this case is if GMO crops could cross pollinate with non-GMO crops and introduce those genes inadvertently into nearby wild/organic populations. this is a big factor of what people mean when they say ‘GMO crops could hurt the environment’ (wether or not it could actually cause harm is another thing that kind of is on a more case-by-case basis with the gene involved and stuff).
from there:
1. if you are a company wanting to mass-produce ur GMO crop, then u put that crop through years of development and then contact USDA APHIS, who sends people out to put it through it’s paces and make sure that it’s not going to fuck anything up/hurt people. usually by this point the company is 600% sure that it’s safe, because the entire regulatory process costs a lot of money and you don’t want to put just any old crop through that just to have it fail.
2. again, USDA APHIS runs under title 7 chapter 104, which classifies GMOs as ‘plant pests’ (this wording gives APHIS the legal jurisdiction to screen them like they do). BUT because of the technical meaning of ‘plant pest’ in another law, a GMO is only a GMO if it contains DNA from another organism. so if you take DNA from the same plant and move it around/modify it, you can petition USDA APHIS to declassify it as a plant pest,meaning that the particular crop becomes completely deregulated and can just kinda….do whatever, get planted whatever, etc and is completely out of the jurisdiction of the department. (it should be noted that this is kind of viewed as a loophole, because one of the concerns about genetic engineering is that by moving genes around the genome, you could accidentally insert it into another gene and break it’s function, causing unintentional adverse affects.)
3. this wording also means that USDA APHIS also has to abide by NEPTA, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which states that if APHIS gets petitioned to deregulate a crop, before they do anything they first have to do an environmental assessment of the crop that is wrapped up in a report saying ‘yea u good, because all our tests came back negative, ur plant is now Free’, ‘you are not allowed to grow this, because of x reasons, your plant must remain under our regulations’, or ‘you are allowed to grow this Wherever and do Whatever, but only in certain places where you can be sure x things won’t happen, if you grow it outside those zones then its back under our jurisdiction’. if USDA APHIS decides that it’s safe enough, they can allow the crop to enter deregulation before the environmental assessment is finished.
so it’s 2004, and Monstanto has an alfalfa crop variety that’s Roundup Ready (meaning that it’s resistant to their patented herbicide Roundup, and if you have it planted you can spray the field with that herbicide and kill everything but the crop. they have a few different kinds of crop like this but this case concerns their alfalfa variety). they decide ‘hey, lets go petition the USDA for our crop to be deregulated so we can do Whatever We Want with it’. the problem here is that alfalfa is open pollinated, meaning that it’s naturally pollinated insects…..that also pollinate other alfalfa nearby. alfalfa that may not be GMO. alfalfa that may, in fact, be organic…..which, by federal regulation, cannot be GMO. APHIS looked over the case and did an assessment and was like ‘yea sure sounds good’ and started the process of deregulating the crop.
organic farmers in california noticed this, and they were like ‘that’s not very cash money of u’. so in 2006, Geertson Seed Farm and a few other organic farms rallied together and went to the california district court and were like ‘we dont think APHIS’s environmental assessment was enough, and we think that they should conduct a more thorough investigation, and during that investigation they should stop the process of deregulating the crop’. the court was like ‘yea that sounds reasonable’, ordered APHIS to conduct a new investigation, and ordered that Monstanto would not be able to plant any more of that alfalfa until APHIS had finished said investigation. monstanto was like ‘can you just like, partially deregulate it so we can like, plant it in some places at least?’ and the court was like ‘No™’.
monsanto Did Not Like This. they appealed to the california appeal courts, who in 2013 also said No™, and they still Did Not Like This, so they appealed to the u.s. supreme court, who was like ‘yea ok you can plant it in some places until APHIS finishes the assessment, because Geertson Seed Farm didn’t actually like….have any harm done to them, and we’ve decided that they need to show harm before they can demand that it not be deregulated’. they also decided that cross-contamination between organic and GMO crops does not qualify as harm done to those crops, because ‘harm’ in the context of a ‘plant pest’ is widespread physical damage and destruction of other plants, and changing the genome of a plant like that is not physical damage, which is….a really interesting conclusion that brings up a lot of questions, tbh. i’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, like….this is pretty strictly adhering to just the damage imposed on plants, and doesn’t branch out to consider how cross contamination could impact organic farmers economically through potentially having their crops deemed non-organic do to no fault of their own. i also feel like this is one of those cases where it could have some Wild Ass implications if it ever comes up in a human or animal context, although i can’t say exactly what that might be.
I like how I should be thinking about writing solutions when it comes to worldbuilding but instead I’ve been quietly thinking about Terra, a decent lot
For one her personality. Thanks to the MHW AU version of her (+ discussions with a friend when it comes to Terra/Kayla’s story arcs) I’ve thought more about Terra in actual canon-
I still believe she should have the air of a coolheaded lonewolf, but I do think that even if subtle that she should show much more emotions. When more intense emotions emerge they just BOOM out and she has to take her emotions by the reigns and regain composure, such as rambly excitement about weapons/magic where her face/voice hold a almost childlike glee, or maybe loud Aghast at something Riivar said or something. In more subtle cases being flustered/blushing for Kayla in certain moments (probably then looking away and ruffling her own hair or some other stim), actually showing disappointment and maybe irritation for when something she’s looking forward to isn’t there. The biggest challenge as both writer and artist will be more negative subtle emotions expressed, by that I’m thinking The Gravestone Scene (no details here cause SPOILERS NOT LEAKING); I imagine a slurry of emotions showing in her eyes and expression as she somehow calmly circles around it
(brain imagines something similar to her “default resting bitch face”, which is where the challenge lies; visually differentiating them), then seeing her trying to contain so much of those strong emotions as they try to leak out only for them for her to perhaps fall on her knees in distress.
I also want her to show SOME form of emotions/nature towards old friends/family- she can hold some of her composure but you see some of it relax before those she’s familiar with; a teasing/haughty child towards Riivar, a more worried/vulnerable self toward her sister Abbey, etc.. Maybe even have her quietly cling to them in crowded/uncomfortable settings. Basically make her more human.
But lastly is a bigger thought for a change for Terra; a little bit of her plot/story/background (if spoilers somehow show I am sorry but it’s a key chunk of her arc to think about). A lot of her story/arc is about opening up more, and also coming to terms of her heritage; despite her hatred for her Biological Family (and by extension the heritage she knew till now), she comes to learn more, and reclaim part of her heritage/culture which she can be actually proud of, embrace and love (that does not mean coming to love her Bio. family, that’s different). Originally some of her own changes in her body would make it that she has to face and try to learn about about her
heritage
which at this point she still hates, and then learn in her own way how to control it despite its dangerous nature, but at this point I’m not sure that really balances well? Basically I feel that “what runs in her veins will kill her and who she loves” needs to be nerfed out, and instead make it that she just avoids her latent powers due to just the hate she developed through her bio. family. This may mean the amount of power/influence in her finale may drop tremendously but at the same time it may make it better (perhaps making what she does to turn the tables in the final battle have more meaning too? “the hungry fire consumes the venom” so, maybe).
Writing this down this probably is a wall of text that is senseless to others but I wanted to put down digitally anyways as I continue to mill about Terra.
@kihaku-gato I’m confused why continuing to produce this species is necessarily a bad thing if the nurseries u say are propagating by seed, cutting, or grafting they’re able to reproduce the species and keep the rest in their natural habitat. Why not buy a bunch from a a nursery and just transplant them in their native region?
Producing a plant species in nurseries is not a bad thing. I meant that as in that is how it’s relieving pressure from the wild populations. That is a good thing (it’s part of why I myself am working on producing Jack-in-the-pulpit in my home nursery. It’s so that the demand to poach such a species drops, as poaching is becoming a thing in the more southerly counties of my region). I was meaning those who say appreciating a beautiful plants species MUST mean it’s being promoted to be poached are off the mark.
As for “buying nursery stock to reintroduce into the wild”, that is its own can of worms that I myself think would not be able to entirely elaborate on but I’ll try my best;
There is a class of nursery production known as Landscape Restoration wherein the production of the plants is for the purpose of reintroducing/reestablishing into the wilds, this style of production works a little differently from normal nursery production; the plants to a degree are given a pedigree. One has to document where their parentage comes from; Where the seed/cuttings come from (often the info the nursery will provide will be either an ecoregion or an address). St. Williams Nursery in southern Ontario is an infamous example of a Landscape Restoration Nursery.
At its bare-bones landscape restoration nurseries work this way is for Genetic Diversity reasons. Let’s use Cucumber Magnolia for this format; it’s endangered in Ontario, but common/widespread in the eastern american states. Why grab Cucumber Magnolias from a Landscape Restoration nursery vs just any nursery to reintroduce them (who would care? who would know?)? Yet again pedigree comes into play; Non-landscape restorative nursuries can/could be american imports which are genetically distinct from Ontarian Magnolias, so you’re risking genetic pollution between the two, and american Magnolias are not as adapted to Ontario’s odd winters compared to Magnolias which have been growing for generations in this ecoregion, so you risk killing the remaining trees through that genetic pollution.
In the case of a species that is outright extinct in the wild, reintroduction is through nursery stock is less of a concern (still can be concerns but I don’t have much energy to elaborate on the varying factoids); you don’t need to worry as much about genetic pollution, just getting them established/naturalized. in the case of where a species is endangered not extinct, this is a bit trickier to decide (though similar questions arise even when reintroducing a plant which has become extinct); is the species being produced by the nursery for the purpose of reintroduction, or is it being produced with the primary intent of hobbyists/gardeners to grow the plant? The former the plants will be produced with the intent of maximizing genetic diversity to make them the most adaptable to reintroduction, the latter though the plants will be often bred the opposite direction (bred for conformity and genetic similarity, often via selective breeding or vegetative propagation) which means they deviate from their wild cousins; they bring with them the potential of polluting the adaptability of the existing wild populations (especially if the introduced plants outnumber the wild endangered specimens), bringing in weaknesses to diseases/pests that their wild equivalents are more resistant to vs their domestic introductions, they may even be bred in such a way that they cannot mesh with the ecosystem the same way due to the deviation from the wild species’ gene pool.
My eyes are overloading from the text so I’ll stop here. But in conclusion;
TLDR; Nursery Production of plants is a good thing, however using nursery produced plants to reestablish wild/endangered populations of plants is not a good idea if that is not what the Nursery is growing the plants for. Reintroducing plants from the wild should be kept to the professionals and the volunteers that are with the professionals.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 