#Search for the New Land

[markscherz]

BOOPHIS SNOOT!

Specifically, an undescribed Boophis from the B. goudotii species group that I discovered in 2015/2016.

[jazzdailyblog]

Lee Morgan: The Trumpet Prodigy Who Redefined Jazz

Introduction: With his distinctive tone, virtuosic playing, and engaging tunes, trumpeter Lee Morgan made an enduring impression on the jazz world. Morgan’s life and music continue to inspire and resonate with jazz fans across the world, from his early success as a young prodigy to his tragic and untimely death. This blog post explores Lee Morgan’s remarkable career, including his ascent to…

[shadowwizdaily]

The Shadow Wizard of the Day is Exris from Monster Lands!

[sluckythewizard]

GUH. i started writing more. ill see if i can find the time to write a lil more while im at work (i will be working for 3 grueling days straight) but in the meantime heeere HEEERE have a small small sip.

[deadpresidents]

Read any good books since your last update about your recent reading?

Yes, although I forget when I last shared the books I've been reading, so hopefully I don't repeat anything.

I know that I've repeated this book because I've mentioned it several times over the past couple of weeks, but I can't help but remind everyone again about Steve Coll's excellent new book, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO). It's definitely the best book I've read so far this year, and it's one of the better books I've read in the past 10 years.

Other recent books that I've read and would recommend checking out:

•Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Brad Gooch

•The Far Land: 200 Years of Murder, Mania, and Mutiny in the South Pacific (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Brandon Presser

•UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here -- and Out There (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Garrett M. Graff Garrett Graff has quickly become one of those authors who I go out of my way to immediately pick up his latest books because he's so well-connected and I ALWAYS learn fascinating things from his books. I don't know if there's a writer/journalist today who has better access to the American defense establishment or proven to be more capable of shining a light on many of the most secretive aspects of the United States government.

•"Uncool and Incorrect" in Chile: The Nixon Administration and the Downfall of Salvador Allende (BOOK | KINDLE) by Stephen M. Streeter

•Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Jared Cohen

•The Liberation of Paris: How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz Saved the City of Light (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Jean Edward Smith

•Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by David Mitchell

•The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700-1948 (BOOK) by Ilan Pappe

•In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Terry Alford

•Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Brian A. Catlos

•Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia, Volume 1 of the Borgata Trilogy (BOOK | KINDLE) by Louis Ferrante

•Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant (BOOK | KINDLE) by John Reeves

•His Final Battle: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Joseph Lelyveld

•Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) by Scott Eyman

[sophieswundergarten]

Wolf 359 Pirate AU where the aliens are actually sirens and instead of just stealing Kepler's hand Lovelace chops it off with a sword and then nearly drowns him

[raeathnos]

.

[despite-everything]

so i'm hesitant to even bring this up because i don't want to jinx anything or get my hopes up but... i have an interview for a job next week. it's in a pretty small town which would be tough for me, but everything else about it seems absolutely fucking perfect, and if it were to be any small town in the united states, this would be ideal, so i think i can handle it. anyway, there aren't a lot of places available for rent, but i just found a recently updated apartment perfectly within my budget that's cat friendly and most importantly: it's a two minute walk from where my job would be. like i'm not kidding. that would be so fucking amazing. i haven't even had my first interview yet, so who knows what will happen, but this feels almost serendipitous?

[unproduciblesmackdown]

asia kate dillon as achilles in iphigenia crash land falls on the neon shell that was once her heart (a rave fable) via theatre incognita and teatrotaller in 2012

[sapphic-woes]

Cackling I just think this is funny

[moe-broey]

I'm def losing the plot now but like. Picked up PMD2 bc the suggestion of remakes actually deeply infuriated me and I was sooooo fuckibg mad about it until I was like. Oh. I can just. Play PMD2. Like. I can Do That. And I think what I realized picking it up again is like. PMD forces you to take things slowly. It makes you sit with characters. With their feelings. With your own feelings. It reminds you again and again that even the littlest most seemingly mundane moments are so so sooo important. Each moment becomes a cherished memory. Of someone you loved dearly. Someone who loved you. Someone you lost. You knew you would be lost. You did it anyway. You were set on it before, with someone you loved, who loved you, and a mutual understanding you have nothing to lose. Let this fallen husk of a world be undone, unmade. For a tomorrow that you'll never see. For a world you'll never be a part of. You don't know that, now, though. Now that you have everything to lose. Now that someone else is losing you. You chose it again. For a better tomorrow, and now, for a world that welcomed you in with warmth and life. For someone you loved. Who loved you so, so much. For a whole world that loved you, that you loved too.

[nightmareonpeachstreet]

>searches a creator on youtube along with a specific video title

>youtube: did you mean ‘the latest videos they’ve posted?’

>me: no youtube I mean the thing I fuckin asked for

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[staff]

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[sideblogsoicanaskquestions]

Does anyone know how to turn off Ai Chat?

When I open Google Chrome on the Windows PC it goes to a search engine that isn't Google and it shows the time and you can pick a color

The tab thing says Ai Chat tab

Settings says it is an extension but it can't be turned off in Settings

I hate it I don't want it as the new tab landing page