English Class Is Excellent, But It Needs To Be More Than Just English Class.

She was a sweet cat who didn't really like guests, but tolerated me.

Today I said goodbye to my beautiful cat. Eve was 18 years old and had thyroid disease, kidney disease and a heart murmur, all of this combined (even with attempting to treat the thyroid disease with medication) led to extreme nausea for her so she stopped eating. We tried everything, including different types of food and appetite increasing/nausea reducing medication, and nothing was successful.

For the first time since the late 1990s, we're without a furry friend in the house, which makes this loss even harder.

So let me tell you the story of how she ended up in our lives. We were having a new year's eve party, as you do, and some friends went outside to have a smoke. They came back inside with a kitten, "Is this yours?" they asked. "I guess it is for tonight," I replied, and took the kitten and put her in my bedroom. Our existing cats instantly hated the intruder. We put up signs around the neighbourhood and no one claimed her. So we had a new cat.

Over time the existing cats decided that she wasn't the absolute worst. The older of the two cats taught her how to hunt and catch mice and the mouse terror was born. Apparently mice were a lot of fun to play with, they made the best toys, had to be sung the song of her people, and we'd often just find scraps of mice about the house during a mouse plague. One night she caught 4, each of them smaller and smaller.

She had two litters of kittens before we managed to get her desexed.

After we moved house she spent a period being very scared of everything, but eventually settled down. Sky growls (thunder) and the vacuum cleaner were terrifying for ever, but sneezes and soft-drink bottles opening gradually were less of a threat.

She spent the last of her years lounging on my work laptop, in her comfortable cat bed, on my bed, or on me or my husband while we were in bed. She was never really a lap cat, but happy to curl up asleep on my thigh while I slept on my side or on my husband's bum while he read social media on his phone in bed.

Here she is guarding me from things coming in through the bedroom door.

And my very last photo of her.

May the rainbow road lead you to fields of mice you can play with my beautiful kitty.

As a queer, computer geek and roleplaying nerd, I object to your use of the "nerd" descriptor to discuss anti-LGBTIQ+ bigots.

I hope you take this in good humour. I approve of your sentiment. I also hope you think about not using "nerds" when "bigots" is more accurate and has much less splash damage.

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

Idk about y'all but I personally think anyone referring to scars, vitiligo, and cellulite as a fetish thing is saying more about themselves than they realize they are.

These are brilliant

EXACTLY!

LEGO - Rubber Duck 

I was walking on a rather remote beach when I came upon this Whip eel drying up in the sun. These are intertidal eels that can actually handle themselves out of water for a bit, but it’s not normal for them to be fully exposed in direct sunlight like this. The tide was at least six hours from coming in and I felt like this eel was in distress, so I made the decision to dig him out and return to the ocean. His body was too delicate to be simply pulled from the hole without injury, so I got to digging.

This endeavor took about 40 minutes as the eel was quite long and difficult to excavate. Also had to continually refill my temporary eel pond to keep him from drying out entirely while I worked.

If you are an eel aficionado like myself, please enjoy this silly little video of the relocation process set to some jaunty royalty-free disco music.

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, using the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

Since this blew up considerably, if you would like to help a disabled intersex person afford their medications and transportation to appointments, please consider sending a dollar or two via cashapp to $ElJay777 🥰 Absolutely no pressure, no guilt trips here. Just if you have it to spare and would like to help. Truly inspiring and encouranging to see this post reach so many and have so much love shown, thank you all so much for seeing us and supporting us. It really makes a difference ❤️

I know most of tumblr is thinking about the USA right now. but fuck the nz government right now too. tomorrow, the treaty principles bill, the 'worst, most comprehensive breach of Te Tiriti in modern times' is being introduced to parliament early, because there were activations planned country wide and the cowards decided to pull it forwards. fuck this government. a friend of mine had to go home early, crying. I've been in shock all day since it came out.

check on your Māori friends, e hoa mā. see what they need. see how you can help. everyday, we see and experience racism. from people around us, up to our government. community care will save us.