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OUR YOUTUBE | OUR INSTAGRAM

@positiveseed​

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Your kids need independence.

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Study Motivation // Requested

I don’t own or take any credit for any of these pictures.

Credit

Aboutstudent_

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Vintage washed

I don’t own or take any credit for any of these pictures.

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Saw Buddha in the most natural position

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Don’t say it out loud. It fucks things up.

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Soon we would have AI porn, customised to every search requests

Generative Porn

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you're kidding me? extra lubrication

i don’t get ppl who are fine w period pussy. smelling like wet parking lot pennies

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paris hilton smoking weed in an elevator, 2010

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today i am quitting weed

weed hasn't done me much good. when i first tried it on the day of my mughal studies midterm in undergrad i wanted some creativity stimulant for better performance in the exam. maybe it helped. i scored better in the midterm than the endterm. maybe it didn't. the essays were easier in the midterm. but it introduced me to weed.

since then i have come a long way. during the covid years, we had online classes. imagine staying with your friends with full access to stuff and alcohol (which i am/was never a big fan) while the classes happen over zoom. i did pretty alright in my classes while smoking weed full time (which makes you think what's the utility of those classes).

when i moved to us, weed was almost legal here. its alternatives like delta-8 vapes and gummies were being sold on the campus (literally 200 mts away from library). wtf.

i engulfed it. this is from my journal.

The effects of smoking weed regularly aren’t noticeable in a day. For the first day, you smoke it, it is excellent. It helps you think clearly and relaxes your mind — both of which are necessary for many things. Slowly, as you pace up, you start realising how bitter its long term effects are. You start craving it and start your journey to be a recluse.

when i started meditating, i realised what i was missing out on. there are two extremes of my mind: i get ecstatic and i get bored. moment to moment, i start craving that ecstatic feeling. initially, it used to come from a thousand different things: scrolling through random blogs, reading a good book, watching a good movie, having a wonderful conversation.

as soon as i started smoking, i was having even better experiences. i was having the ecstatic feeling even more. like, what can even come close to having sex when you're high. nothing like it at all.

however what did happen was that i grew attached to this ecstatic-ness. i started craving being ecstatic. i grew averse to being bored. there was so much around that i needed to experience.

when i went for vipassana, i saw this with my own eyes. i was on a see-saw between cravings and aversion. i was averse to everything while i craved weed. when i got weed, i was averse to not being high, which made me smoke even more as my tolerance went up.

craving <--> aversion

when i sit down to meditate, i see this. i see this everytime. i wasn't strong enough to quit weed. i always had this idea: but it's so good, why would you want to avoid this!

but the simple reason is: life is beautiful when you're not a rocking pendulum between cravings and aversion.

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Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” Doesn’t Work in 2022

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

Credit card companies are anti-porn. You’ve probably heard how Pornhub can’t accept credit cards anymore. Or seen the new rules from Mastercard. Whatever crypto-utopia might come in the coming decades, today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy. The vast majority of Automattic’s revenue comes from people buying our services and auto-renewing on credit cards, including the ads-free browsing upgrade that Tumblr recently launched. If we lost the ability to process credit cards, it wouldn’t just threaten Tumblr, but also the 2,000+ people in 97 countries that work at Automattic across all our products.

App stores, particularly Apple’s, are anti-porn. Tumblr started in 2007, the same year the iPhone was released. Originally, the iPhone didn’t have an App Store, and the speed of connectivity and quality of the screen meant that people didn’t use their smartphone very much and mostly interacted with Tumblr on the web, using desktop and laptop computers (really). Today 40% of our signups and 85% of our page views come from people on mobile apps, not on the web. Apple has its own rules for what’s allowed in their App Store, and the interpretation of those rules can vary depending on who is reviewing your app on any given day. Previous decisions on what’s allowed can be reversed any time you submit an app update, which we do several times a month. If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we’d probably have to shut the service down. If you want apps to allow more adult content, please lobby Apple. No one in the App Store has any effective power, even multi-hundred-billion companies like Facebook/Meta can be devastated when Apple changes its policies. Aside: Why do Twitter and Reddit get away with tons of super hardcore content? Ask Apple, because I don’t know. My guess is that Twitter and Reddit are too big for Apple to block so they decided to make an example out of Tumblr, which has “only” 102 million monthly visitors. Maybe Twitter gets blocked by Apple sometimes too but can’t talk about it because they’re a public company and it would scare investors.

There are lots of new rules around verifying consent and age in adult content. The rise of smartphones also means that everyone has a camera that can capture pictures and video at any time. Non-consensual sharing has grown exponentially and has been a huge problem on dedicated porn sites like Pornhub – and governments have rightly been expanding laws and regulations to make sure everyone being shown in online adult content is of legal age and has consented to the material being shared. Tumblr has no way to go back and identify the featured persons or the legality of every piece of adult content that was shared on the platform and taken down in 2018, nor does it have the resources or expertise to do that for new uploads.

Porn requires different service providers up and down the stack. In addition to a company primarily serving adult content not having access to normal financial services and being blocked by app stores, they also need specialized service providers – for example, for their bandwidth and network connections. Most traditional investors won’t fund primarily adult businesses, and may not even be allowed to by their LP agreements. (When Starbucks started selling alcohol at select stores, some investors were forced to sell their stock.)

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs. 

I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.

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Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi was a prolific letter writer who wrote letters to many people throughout his life. Some of these letters were playful and humorous, while others were deeply insightful.

Gandhi was a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner. He believed these practices were essential for physical and spiritual health. He even wrote a book called "Key to Health" that outlined his approach.

Gandhi was a strict vegetarian and believed strongly in the benefits of a simple, natural diet. He also experimented with various diets throughout his life, including fruitarianism and raw foodism.

Gandhi was a prolific reader and writer. He wrote extensively on various topics, including politics, spirituality, and philosophy.

Gandhi was known for his unconventional approach to dressing. He often wore a simple, homespun white garment called a dhoti. He also sometimes wore a shawl and carried a walking stick.

Gandhi was a skilled spinner, believing spinning was an essential part of the struggle for Indian independence. He even spun his own cloth and encouraged others to do the same.

Gandhi was a nature lover and often took long walks in the countryside. He also wrote about preserving the environment and living in harmony with nature.

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When you receive positive reviews from all three reviewers

i think this screenshot from our cyber safety training at work has potential as a reaction image

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Art by Artem Chebokha