#I am not an economics

[togglesbloggle]

Why do you think tumblr will die in only a few years?

Answer with jargon: a strong correlation between recent economic shifts and chaotic choices by major tech companies is most easily explained if the 'traditional' social media platforms of 2005-2020 are mostly a zero-interest rate phenomenon.

Longer answer, with less jargon: Even though Musk's takeover is making all the headlines recently, the last year has in fact seen major shakeups at many social media platforms, so Twitter is actually part of a trend. Almost inevitably, these are cases of social media companies trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of their userbase (Reddit), cut costs dramatically (Twitter), or both. This marks a sudden departure from a much more relaxed attitude towards revenue in the Pictures Of Cats industry, where the focus was historically more on expanding the userbase to a global scale and then counting on world domination to sort of <????> and then the company would become profitable eventually.

We joke, correctly, that Tumblr has never been profitable. But the entire structure of ad-supported content curation between human users is deeply suspect as a business model; IIRC Twitter was never profitable either, and Facebook has been juicing its numbers in very shenanigany ways. Discord was actually making money on net last I checked, at least a bit, so they're not all completely in the hole. But even if you take the accounting figures at face value, none of these companies has anything like the amount of money that their cultural prominence would suggest. Instead, they're heavily fueled by investment dollars, money given by super-rich people and institutions in the expectation that fueling the growth of the company now will pay off with interest later.

So what changed?

I'm not an expert here, but I'll do my best to muddle through. The American Federal Reserve has one mandate that dominates all others (sometimes called the 'dual mandate'), and one primary tool that it uses to enforce that mandate. The goal is to maintain low (but nonzero) rates of inflation and unemployment, which in their models are deeply interlinked phenomena. The tool is 'rate hikes', or more specifically, tweaking the mandatory rate of interest that banks charge one another when making loans.

As a particular consequence of this, hiking the rate also means that bonds start paying out much better. When the rate hike goes through, that affects people who let the government borrow their personal cash- that is, people who buy bonds- as well as institutions like banks that lend to one another. A rate hike means that you, personally, can make a little extra money by letting the government borrow it for a while. The federal government of the US is a rock-solid low-risk choice for this kind of moneymaking scheme, so the federal interest rate sort of defines the 'number to beat'; to attract investors, a company has to give those investors money at a better percentage than whatever the feds are offering. Particularly since a company is a lot more likely to go out of business than the state!

To wrap this back around to the Pictures Of Cats industry: the higher the rate hike, the better your company needs to be doing (or the less risky it needs to be as an option) to attract big investment dollars. Very high rates make it very hard to convince people to invest in business activity rather than the government itself, and very low rates put moonshots and big dreams on the table, investment-wise, in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Social media companies were one of these big dreams.

In the great financial crisis of 2008, the Fed took the dramatic step of reducing their rate to zero, trying to juice the economy back to life. And ever since then, they've kept it there. This has produced an unprecedented amount of funding for very crazy stuff; it's part of what has allowed so many weird new tech companies (Uber, streaming services, etc.) to get so much money, so quickly, and use that to grow to massive size without a clear model of how they're ever going to make money. This state of affairs kept going for quite a while, with no clear stopping point; that zero-interest environment has been one of the shadowy forces in the background that shaped fundamental contours and limits in how our Very Online World has grown and developed. Until COVID.

Or rather, the bounce back from COVID: we suddenly saw a massive spike in inflation and an incredibly strong labor market, as employees quit in record numbers, negotiated higher salaries, and found better work, and at the same time supply chain issues and other economy stuff caused prices to climb dramatically. Recall the Fed's 'dual mandate', to control the employment rate and inflation. This was, basically, kicking them right in the jooblies. They responded in kind, finally finally raising their rates for the first time in 15 years. For some of the people reading this, it'll be the first significant shift in their entire adult lives.

The goal, as I understand it, is to fight inflation by reducing the amount of outside investment into private companies, forcing them to hire fewer people and pay smaller salaries, ultimately drawing money out of the working economy and driving prices back down by lowering demand for everything. You get paid less, so you eat out less, and buy at cheaper restaurants when you do, so restaurants have to compete harder by lowering their prices; seems pretty dodgy to me as a theory, but it's the theory. And the first part will almost certainly work- companies are going to see less investment.

For social media companies that are still paying most of their salaries with investor dollars instead of revenues, this is especially catastrophic. Without outside investment, they're just a massive pile of expenses waiting to happen, huge yearly costs in developer salaries and server fees. This is why, all of a sudden, every social media company is suddenly making bonkers decisions. They're noticing that nobody wants to give them any more money! So they're trying to figure out how to live a lot more cheaply, to actually somehow for reals turn their giant userbases in to some kind of actual revenue stream, or both.

Tumblr is kind of the ur-example of this kind of thing, supporting a very large userbase with no coherent plan whatsoever to start paying its staff with our dollars instead of investors' dollars. When interest rates were low and Scrooge McDuck had nowhere else to hide his pile of gold coins, a crazy kid with a dream was the best alternative available to him. But now, unless something changes, he's going to notice he can just buy bonds instead, and that crazy kid can go take a hike.

That's why I think Tumblr is living on borrowed time, though I don't know how much. Like all cartoons, the economy doesn't really fall off a cliff until somebody looks down and notices they've been standing on thin air this whole time. But they always fall eventually; that's the gag.

[jingle-jangle-spurs]

Robert House watching The Courier rip all the copper wiring out the walls of the Lucky 38

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Sublime Equine.

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[captainkirkk]

How long was it between when Iroh convinced Zuko to take up the Fire Throne, and Sozin's comet? A day? Less??

AU where Iroh convinces Zuko to be the next Fire Lord MUCH earlier in the series. Zuko, who hasn't been in formal education since was 13yo, understandably panics. He barely remembers his lessons on How To Be the Fire Lord, and they were all focused on how to rule during wartime. Not peace. What does an international peace treaty even LOOK like and how does one go about making it???? How does trade work when you're NOT trying to eradicate every other nation????

Book 3 Zuko spends all of his time teaching Aang firebending, interrogating the other members about their culture's traditions and politics, going on Blue Spirit journeys to raid any passing libraries, and reading everything he can get his hands on. He barely eats. He doesn't sleep. He's info dumping about the DRIEST political texts. The gaang are THIS close to holding an intervention or having Toph sit on him until he sleeps.

[tamquira]

Hey so what better way to start up my tumblr page than to post what is esentially a communism fanart? Sort of? Communism-inspired??? But also my favourite artwork I have done to this day.

[adolin]

My Coronabeth Dominant Twin manifesto is simple and it's as follows: there's no way the twins could have planned for Canaan House.

John requesting new Lyctors wasn't something anyone in the Houses would've expected to happen in their lifetimes with any meaningful probability. This means that when the Tridentarii started the double necromancer ruse, they expected to carry on for life. It was an arrangement that benefited Corona vastly more than Ianthe.

What Ianthe got out of it, as far as we know: Corona would rule Ida, which she isn't keen on (as per NtN). But it also meant that Ianthe signed up for a life in her sister's shadow, with everyone regarding Corona as the perfect heir and Ianthe as the lame spare. Worse, for Ianthe, everyone believed Corona was the better flesh magician (as per As Yet Unsent). There's a lot more in for Corona in this arrangement and a lifetime of mild humiliation for Ianthe. As we see during the reveal in GtN, she was just dying to tell anyone that SHE is the necromantic genius of the pair, actually.

On their relationship with Babs: in GtN, Gideon notices that Babs obeys Ianthe's orders over Corona's. She also notices that Corona looks shocked about this — to me, this means that it's NOT something Coronabeth is used to. Pre-Canaan House, they are equals in their ruse. At Canaan House, it becomes obvious that if Ianthe ascends she'll leave Corona in the dust, and their relationship has to change. I don't think the way they act around each other from Canaan House onwards is at all representative of their relationship back on the Third, and I don't think Babs deferring to Ianthe over Corona is something that has happened often before, if at all.

There's the bit where Corona routinely threatened suicide to get her way since they were teenagers. In NtN she's doing it to save Camilla's life, but she reminisces fondly about it like it was something she did often to get her way, like it was a fun mind game they played with each other.

You've also got Ianthe calling Corona a bimbo and insulting her and whatever, and me arguing that Corona pulled the few strings doesn't make Ianthe good but as things stand I'm much more inclined to believe that, before Ianthe attained Lyctorhood, Corona was the one in charge — and I’m also firmly convinced that she’s using BoE for her own ends, and we’ll see her Fuck Shit Up in AtN.

[bladehorror]

None of the modern terts we have work well with any of the genes we've been getting since like Flaunt and Flair. They either make the dragon look too busy (thylacine, koi, crackle, flecks, polkadot, wish), hide key parts of the primary genes (underbelly, points, scales, etc), barely make a difference (sparkle, spines) or just have always been extremely situational (looking at you, Peacock and Soap). We DESPERATELY need tertiary genes that can balance out the business of the new genes while adding to the appearence of the dragon in a significant way.

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[froody]

Domestic science/home economics are such important fields to be taught in school. Everyone should know food safety, how to cook basic meals, do basic mending to clothing, budget a household, do laundry + understand clothing tags, clean a house etc. It is such an important foundation for life and something many kids never get and that’s not their fault. So many young adults move out on their own and have no clue how to take care of themselves because they were never taught how. I honestly believe it needs to be a core class for all students and especially male students.

[repurposedmeatlocker]

If you answer, please reblog with your age and what country/state (if from the United States) you are from.

[why-the-heck-not]

whiskey & writing this thesis bc the introduction chapter is taking more linguistical creativity than what I have with just caffeine (idk what to write in this without it sounding like a 3rd grader’s essay yikes)

[catocappuccino]

Her favourite colour is yello w

[fandanglefrogfarts]

What is it about fiber arts that just makes you fall down the worst rabbit hole of your life? 12 years ago I thought it would be fun to learn to crochet and now here I am spinning my own yarn from dog fur.

[goldenhour-s]

coming soon: britechester townhouse(s) for rent 🔑

[fatuismooches]

I was just thinking and like... pet names that Dottore would use? Are you kidding me??

Like, when he's teasing, he would use something like "Doll" to just make sure you know he's playing around. Just a little doll to play with.

"Don't make that face, you know I'm just joking, doll."

But if it was a more serious thing? He strikes me as a "my love" kinda guy. Or even "dearest" occasionally.

"Good morning, my love."

"Are you hungry, dearest?"

I like to think occasionally if he's busy and/or needs alone time he just pulls off his gloves, walks over to reader, cups their cheeks and

"Honey, sweetheart, light of my life, would you like to spend some time around the segments? Thank you, I love you."

RAAAAAAH HE MAKES ME INSANE

Although Dottore uses pet names a lot more frequently than his younger selves did (they still cringe a bit at it) of course he rarely ever uses them to fully or truly be romantic. There are times when cute ones like "my (be)love(d)/dear(est)" slip out without much thought, or perhaps you're especially vulnerable and need something more soothing. Whenever these moments happen, they never fail to be endearing and warm your heart, considering how foreign it feels to hear such things come out of that man’s mouth. You never get quite used to it and he most definitely abuses this.

…But a lot of time he uses them to rile you up or tease you, to see your expression change every couple of seconds at his sheer audacity. He finds it very amusing to see you chew on your lip, struggling to find the words to quip back like you normally do when bantering. It’s an experiment of sorts for the scholar(s). (Because the older segments also tend to partake in this to gather results.)

Dottore also loves to tease you with darling. He tends to stretch the word out too, dragging it out as he purrs it into your ear, in a very successful attempt (much to your dismay) to get you to calm down whenever he needs to - you can't be mad at him anymore when he goes into that tone, can you?

It’s also really obvious when Dottore's being sarcastic with his pet names like you said… the half-sincere and half-insincerity makes you pout a bit but, you’re not too mad about it. That’s just how he is sometimes. You’ll just go and bother some other segments and let them flirt with you, and then wait a bit for Prime to eventually come back and drag you away.

If you also happen to have any pet names that make you cringe, occasionally he likes to purposely use them on you to see you get embarrassed, laughing at your groans. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get him embarrassed. His main expressions toward your pet names are 1) indifference as he hums in response 2) confusion at something unusual or weird 3) mild annoyance if you continue to call him that weird pet name.

[saltywinteradult]

my villain origin story: the idea that criticising dany's complete failure to replace an economy based on slavery with any kind of viable alternative, leading to slaver's bay descending into chaos and suffering on a massive scale, is the same thing as defending slavery.