#college essay examples

[elite-assignments-help]

DM for Inquiries and help

[selamat-linting]

this is going to sound very mean of me but i do think javanese ppl are the 'WASP' of indos lol. i dont mean this in a "hehee mari kita rasis antara sunda dan madura" this about the genuine antiblackness that melanesian people experienced and how they always get singled out by the police in protests and gets discriminated out of a job because their skin color and gets ushered out of establishments by security because they look homeless despite wearing the same things ras melayu ppl wears. this is about state sanctioned murders in papua, the gentrification from the transmigrasi program and everytime we say nkri harga mati we are supporting all of that to continue to exist. this is also about how chinese descent people gets religious discrimination and is basically barred from holding a seat in government and the pogroms they suffered in 1998. like, fuck all the javanese dudes who whine about ppl mocking their skin color then turn around to say the n slur for fun and call random melanesians monkeys in their group chat.

[peaceblank]

The med school primary application asking if my work and activities are meaningful, like by simply going out of my way to do anything doesn’t have some kind of impact on my life.

[blimbo-buddy]

You know, I would have never, ever thought in my entire life that I would read an essay example for my college English class that delved deep into the political and social meanings behind The Bee Movie and got to the point where the example said that Barry B. Benson was like Karl Marx

[recsspecs]

finished reading this great book, 100% recommended to anyone who needs help with their application essay straight-forward approach, easy to read, written in short and digestible format.

[goodgoblinai1]

College Application Essay Examples for a Winning Admission

Explore our comprehensive library of College Application Essay Examples to gain valuable insights into what makes a winning submission. These examples are written by students who have successfully navigated the admissions process and offer clear, relatable templates for your own essays. From academic achievements to personal challenges, you'll find diverse essay samples that can help shape your unique narrative.

[fnaf-fanatical]

(I tried uploading the audio file but tumblr doesn't like me for some reason :[ )

Anyways:

School Project

I’ve been writing for a while, which actually started through here because tumblr posts with incorrect quotes led me to reading stories, which in turn made me start writing them. I was 11 or 12 at the time, fresh into my first real fandom, and very into wattpad stories, which as anyone on this site will know are unhinged, unedited, and due to the fact that most people writing there are very young like I was, are more than often lower quality than other writing sites (which is not to hate on wattpad writers - i’ve actually even read some really good and profound stories on there, both fanfic and otherwise, but that’s not the vast majority of the site, at least from what I’ve seen).

Honestly I first started writing because not only did it let me make the things I want to see - and was the start of my maladaptive daydreams though I didn’t know anything about that yet - but because it was also an outlet. Life was shitty, and it showed me that other people struggled, that my favorite characters could suffer from anxiety and depression and just shitty mental health, and that meant that I could project onto them. I wasn’t the one who wanted to kill myself dramatically or mutilate my body to get people to finally recognize I was in pain, the character was. I was too scared to ever harm myself physically, at least with a blade or the way I’d seen depicted in stories, but when I wrote, it didn’t matter how realistic it was or how gorey or graphic, because it was all fictional, and the rules were fake anyways.

And over time, obviously, my writing got better and I learned to Care About Myself more, until I didn’t really need to do that anymore. Except... I still liked making stories. I’d always been a storyteller, and writing gave me a medium to do so that would actually get me listened to, my stories could be long and rambling and people wouldn’t be annoyed or stop listening because it was a text, so they could stop reading if they wanted or not look at it or come back to it when they had more energy, and I wouldn’t directly face that, probably wouldn’t even know it was happening.

And, well, one of the things with time blindness is that you can be sitting there, know the time is 2:30 and you’ve got to eat something before you go to bed hours later, and yet you’ll blink and suddenly it’s 10:45 and you haven’t eaten anything, used the bathroom, or even really moved in 8 hours and where did the time go what happened. I started setting an alarm to remind myself to eat dinner, but that didn’t change the fact that I could get so “in-the-zone” that literal hours would blink by like seconds, because while my perception of time has always been wack, focusing - likely hyperfocus cause of the undiagnosed adhd - knows no rules or bounds and disregards the passage of time like a used bandaid that will inevitably show up again later where you least want it yet will go unnoticed and un-thought of until then.

Genuinely, I think I’ve grown a lot as a writer and I enjoy most of my own works, both because they’re what I want to see and because I can appreciate the skill that goes into it - which doesn’t mean I don’t still have a lot to learn, just that I’ve learned to stop shitting on my own abilities because it’s not perfect.

I’d always noticed when I was reading - usually proper books, when I was younger at least - different mistakes or ways things could’ve been articulated better, and when I didn’t know what a word or concept was I’d do everything I could to find out. So it’s no surprise that those skills transferred over to when I became a writer and took every source I could to try and improve my writing, some more valid than others.

Just... yeah. Writing helped me a lot, and I like where I’m at now.

[whenthegoldrays]

Bragging time!

Yesterday I took my placement tests for college and I got a 990/990 on English, 972/990 on math, and 7/8 on the essay portion!

[friendtechbd]

Myself paragraph 8-10, SSC, HSC and all students 100-500 words

myself paragraph 8-10, SSC, HSC and all students 100-500 words. Go through the below written paragraph carefully, hope you will be able to appear in any exam by reading it. Myself paragraph 150 keywords. In today’s fast-paced world, personal growth is essential for individuals seeking to thrive personally and professionally. We can unlock our true potential and achieve success by dedicating time…

[3verythingiknowaboutlove]

the limit does not exist!

how spencer helps college!reader understand a little calculus and therefore understand how he loves her.

MDNI | smut word count: 1931 warnings & tags & stuff: fem reader, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), lil bit of overstim hehe, pure unbridled affection, LOVE, FLUFF, hugging, reader cries, this was in fact meant to be written for spence's birthday... sorry about that school is kicking my butt lets just pretend it's october! author's note: this one is for my folks who HATE their calculus class and want spencer reid to give them head instead <3 maybe this can help you romanticize it a bit. i think this is classified as self indulgent…like REALLY self indulgent… hah... anyway i hope you enjoy! let me know your thoughts if u have any, i loveeeee you!! have a great day my hands are shaking posting this smut is so scary!!!!!

You sat in bed, staring down your notebook, eyes narrowed. Limits stared back at you. You were just about at your own limit, if you were being honest. 

Your brain, however sharp and witty it may be, is absolutely not one designed for calculus. A literary analysis essay? Done in half an hour. In depth scientific research project? Easiest months of your life. But there’s something about finding the instantaneous rate of change of a curve at one point in time by finding the slope of a tangent line that hasn't clicked yet. 

A slew of other papers- notes, practice worksheets printed from obscure websites, and formulas- surround you, a sea of unfinished thoughts from the past month of the semester.

You bite on the end of your pen, the little hope you had for a good grade in this class slipping further and further away with each passing moment, like the last ember dying in the remains of a fire.

What you really wanted to be doing was celebrating Spencer’s birthday with him right now. A chocolate cake lay on the kitchen counter and pasta simmers on the stove, but you and your boyfriend had agreed to do a solid hour of work before the celebrations ensued.

You were never particularly strong willed when it came to following through on such agreements.

“Teach me calculus,” you say, a very impressive three minutes later, flopping down on the couch. Your head makes its way to its forever resting spot, Spencer’s lap. He raises his eyebrows slightly, thumb reaching out to trace over the slope of your nose. His eyes flit between you and the file to the side of him. 

“I thought we agreed on an hour.”

“Yeah. But it wouldn’t be a very productive hour if I didn’t know how to do what I have to do. And I missed you.” 

He sighs quietly, closing the file next to him. 

“What do you not understand?” You smile at that, loving how quickly you won.

“Related rates. Like, conceptually.” 

Spencer hums in response.

“It’s October. You’re not even supposed to know related rates yet.”

“Fine. Then let's open presents,” you respond, smiley. His eyebrows get impossibly higher, hand stroking your cheek delicately.

“No. I want our night to be a little more stress free when we celebrate, okay? How about you think about that lovely cake you made for me. What if I decided to squash it so that the diameter would get bigger, going from…let’s say, 20 centimeters to 26 centimeters in 3 seconds, and the height would get smal-”

“That wouldn't be nice. It took me like four hours,” you interrupt, grumbling. He cracks a smile.

“For the sake of the example, let's say I was an awful boyfriend and really wanted to ruin all the hard work you put in for me.”

You roll your eyes.

“Hey,” he says, hand moving down to touch your jaw softly. “Don’t do that. Don’t be difficult. I’m helping you.”

“Sorry. I guess I need you to zoom out a little. I don’t really get why I’m learning this as a whole.” Spencer’s eyes pore into yours, staring down at you adoringly for a small moment as he comes up with an answer.

“Calculus helps us begin to explain the unexplainable by harnessing what we can,” Spencer says simply. “Einstein once said that, ‘Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas,’ which makes it simple in practice, but I actually like to think about it as the opposite philosophically. Trying to find logic in the more poetic ideas.”

You cuddle deeper in his lap.

“Think he would agree with that?” you ask. “I do answer to Einstein before you, unfortunately.” Spencer bends down to kiss your hair.

“I think so. He also had a really nice quote where he remarked that, ‘Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.’ He said, ‘How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.’”

Spencer takes a deep breath.

“Math doesn’t explain how I love you. It can’t. But I love the fact that it tries to. It kinda makes you wanna learn it as best you can.”

You process that for a long second and nod. He keeps talking.

… 

Presents get opened, and cake gets eaten before dinner. Of course.

You’re now in bed, on top of the covers, forcing Spencer to give you a fashion show of the new sweater vest and tie you got him. He turns to you after putting it on, and you beam. 

“I really like it. You look great. Do you like it?” you ask. He nods, smiling back at you.

“I’m gonna wear it to work tomorrow.” 

You beckon for Spencer to come closer, sitting up in bed. Your hands go out to the tie, tugging at the knot softly. He stares down at you until eventually interrupting your motions with a slow kiss, hands cupping your face.

“You’re so pretty,” he mutters.

He pulls away and finishes what you started, folding the tie neatly and setting it in the drawer. Then comes the vest, and soon enough, he’s just in his boxers.

“You’re the pretty one,” you say quietly. “Come to bed.” He crawls on next to you, tugging you into his arms. “Happy birthday, Spence. I love you.” He dips his forehead to your shoulder.

“I love you.”

Before you know it, he’s shifted on top of you, moving down. Fast. You blink, hard, trying to rid your head of the hazy endorphins as you register what he’s doing.

“What? No, I was gonna do that. It’s your birthday. You don’t have to,” you protest.

“But I really, really want to, darling girl,” he murmurs back, kissing your knee and softly pushing it to the side.

You fluster and Spencer just looks at you, fingers tracing shapes on your waist, waiting for you to be ready. 

“Well. Um. Okay. If you insist. I can’t really deny the birthday boy.” Your voice is small, and a little giddy smile grows on your face. Of course Spencer Reid would want to give you head on his birthday. 

He smiles a little against the bare skin of your hip where your top meets your shorts. Then he meets your eyes. 

“You know you can, though, right?” he asks, voice a little more serious. You reach out to touch his hair softly. 

“Yeah. I know.”

Fingers hook your shorts, gently pulling them down. He presses a kiss to your thigh, and then he suddenly looks down at it. 

“Soft,” he murmurs, like he’s making a mental note. He presses another, and another, incrementally going closer and closer to your soaked through underwear. His eyebrows scrunch when he sees the wet spot. “All this from a few kisses?” 

You blush, unable to respond. 

Spencer’s fingers hook a centimeter of your underwear. “These?” he checks.

“Yes, please,” you manage. He tugs them down, silently noticing the slickness of your sex, and exhales shakily.

“How many times on average does it take for a guy to call you pretty on a given day before you get annoyed?” he murmurs, soft smile playing on his face. You smile too, head cloudy from his words, but it immediately drops when his lips press directly against your pulsing clit, kissing it softly.

“Fuck,” you say (Spencer would argue moan) softly (loudly). You let out a content sigh, and he moves to suckle it, actions becoming less and less delicate. 

It’s not harsh, but incessant. Spencer knows what you can take. He knows exactly what you can take. You’re both quiet for a bit, save for your breathy moans. 

“Spencer,” you say softly, ripping you both out of your individually hazy and dirty and distracted minds. “You’re too far away.” He looks up to you, face parallel to your aching core, hair beautifully messy and mouth glistening.

After a second, he grabs your hips, gently pushing you up against the pillows so you’re propped up at a better angle. He then shifts his body up wordlessly so he’s more above you, dipping his head down to give you a soft kiss. You taste yourself, tongue darting out to lick your lips.

His hand takes over where his mouth was, sliding in between your folds with a practiced ease. Spencer looks down at you, eyes wide and flitting between yours, searching for a reaction.

You reach out and wrap your arms around him, holding him close. “Holy shit, I love you,” you murmur.

His fingers lightly graze your clit again before one slides into you. “Angel,” he breathes out, so quietly. “I love you too. This okay? Are you okay?”

You nod feverishly and lift your hips to meet his hand, always in a perpetual state of wanting more, to be closer. Your bodies are melded so close together, barely giving him room to push his hand into you. He doesn’t even bother to ask you to use your words or keep your hips down, like he might on a regular night.

He pulls his head back to watch as he pushes another finger into you, stretching you just a little. “There we go. You always feel like heaven around me.”

Your eyes flit up to his face as he says those words, now having a little more room to observe him. You focus on the slope of his nose and curve of his mouth. 

“You’re so perfect,” you say quietly, adoringly, before you even realize it was true.

You blink at that thought. Spencer Reid is perfect, despite whatever universal odds deeming that impossible.

Those graphs, those formulas, now laying discarded & crumpled on the ground. They click, a little bit. You understand why Albert Einstein wanted to spend his life developing theories of relativity.

This is how Spencer sees you? What he was talking about earlier?

This is how he sees you?

The thought is almost too much.

Spencer sees your face, and not knowing what's going on in your head, slides down his free hand from your cheek to your carotid, feeling your racing pulse. “Take a deep breath for me, okay? You're about to come, huh?”

You inhale and are met with peace. Then your orgasm hits you like a wave. You clench hard around his fingers, and he just watches it happen, fascinated. “Baby,” he coos softly at you.

It wasn’t just your sensitivity he’s currently maximizing on or the little kisses he dips down to leave on your neck that sealed the deal, but the very thought that you could be loved in a way that is so perfectly impossible.

You exhale breathily as Spencer pushes you through the last trails of your climax, fingers not caring one bit that you just had your world tilted on its axis. 

“Spencer. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” you say eventually, overstimulated.

“You’re okay. Did so good.” he murmurs, fingers slipping out of you. 

His thumb brushes your cheek, wiping away a tear you didn't even realize was dripping down.

“Don’t cry, you always cry. It’s my birthday. Don’t cry on my birthday,” he whispers soothingly, affection lacing his voice.

“I’m not.” 

Another one falls. 

You reach and press out that perpetual little slope between his eyebrows with your thumb, gentle, like you might break him. “I’m not crying.”

Spencer lets you lie.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social media needs (dumpster) fire exits

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

Of course you should do everything you can to prevent fires – and also, you should build fire exits, because no matter how hard you try, stuff burns. That includes social media sites.

Social media has its own special form of lock-in: we use social media sites to connect with friends, family members, community members, audiences, comrades, customers…people we love, depend on, and care for. Gathering people together is a profoundly powerful activity, because once people are in one place, they can do things: plan demonstrations, raise funds, organize outings, start movements. Social media systems that attract people then attract more people – the more people there are on a service, the more reasons there are to join that service, and once you join the service, you become a reason for other people to join.

Economists call this the "network effect." Services that increase in value as more people use them are said to enjoy "network effects." But network effects are a trap, because services that grow by connecting people get harder and harder to escape.

That's thanks to something called the "collective action problem." You experience the collective action problems all the time, whenever you try and get your friends together to do something. I mean, you love your friends but goddamn are they a pain in the ass: whether it's deciding what board game to play, what movie to see, or where to go for a drink afterwards, hell is truly other people. Specifically, people that you love but who stubbornly insist on not agreeing to do what you want to do.

You join a social media site because of network effects. You stay because of the collective action problem. And if you leave anyway, you will experience "switching costs." Switching costs are all the things you give up when you leave one product or service and join another. If you leave a social media service, you lose contact with all the people you rely on there.

Social media bosses know all this. They play a game where they try to enshittify things right up to the point where the costs they're imposing on you (with ads, boosted content, undermoderation, overmoderation, AI slop, etc) is just a little less than the switching costs you'd have to bear if you left. That's the revenue maximization strategy of social media: make things shittier for you to make things better for the company, but not so shitty that you go.

The more you love and need the people on the site, the harder it is for you to leave, and the shittier the service can make things for you.

How cursed is that?

But digital technology has an answer. Because computers are so marvelously, miraculously flexible, we can create emergency exits between services so when they turn into raging dumpster fires, you can hit the crash-bar and escape to a better service.

For example, in 2006, when Facebook decided to open its doors to the public – not just college kids with .edu addresses – they understood that most people interested in social media already had accounts on Myspace, a service that had sold to master enshittifier Rupert Murdoch the year before. Myspace users were champing at the bit to leave, but they were holding each other hostage.

To resolve this hostage situation, Facebook gave prospective Myspace users a bot that would take their Myspace login and password and impersonate them on Myspace, scraping all the messages their stay-behind friends had posted for them. These would show up in your Facebook inbox, and when you replied to them, the bot would log back into Myspace as you and autopilot those messages into your outbox, so they'd be delivered to your friends there.

No switching costs, in other words: you could use Facebook and still talk to your Myspace friends, without using Myspace. Without switching costs, there was no collective action problem, because you didn't all have to leave at once. You could trickle from Myspace to Facebook in ones and twos, and stay connected to each other.

Of course, that trickle quickly became a flood. Network effects are a double-edged sword: if you're only stuck to a service because of the people there, then if those people go, there's no reason for you to stick around. The anthropologist danah boyd was able to watch this from the inside, watching Myspace's back-end as whole groups departed en masse:

When I started seeing the disappearance of emotionally sticky nodes, I reached out to members of the MySpace team to share my concerns and they told me that their numbers looked fine. Active uniques were high, the amount of time people spent on the site was continuing to grow, and new accounts were being created at a rate faster than accounts were being closed. I shook my head; I didn’t think that was enough. A few months later, the site started to unravel.

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

Social media bosses hate the idea of fire exits. For social media enshittifiers, the dumpster fire is a feature, not a bug. If users can escape the minute you turn up the heat, how will you cook them alive?

Facebook nonconsensually hacked fire exits into Myspace and freed all of Rupert Murdoch's hostages. Fire exits represents a huge opportunity for competitors – or at least they did, until the motley collection of rules we call "IP" was cultivated into a thicket that made doing unto Facebook as Facebook did unto Myspace a felony:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

When Elon Musk set fire to Twitter, people bolted for the exits. The safe harbor they sought out at first was Mastodon, and a wide variety of third party friend-finder services popped up to help Twitter refugees reassemble their networks on Mastodon. All departing Twitter users had to do was put their Mastodon usernames in their bios. The friend-finder services would use the Twitter API to pull the bios of everyone you followed and then automatically follow their Mastodon handles for you. For a couple weeks there, I re-ran a friend-finder service every couple days, discovering dozens and sometimes hundreds of friends in the Fediverse.

Then, Elon Musk shut down the API – bricking up the fire exit. For a time there, Musk even suspended the accounts of Twitter users who mentioned the existence of their Mastodon handles on the platform – the "free speech absolutist" banned millions of his hostages from shouting "fire exit" in a burning theater:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/martineparis/2022/12/17/elon-musk-bans-journalists-on-twitter-as-more-flee-to-mastodon-heres-who-to-follow/

Mastodon is a nonprofit, federated service built on a open standards. Anyone can run a Mastodon server, and the servers all talk to each other. This is like email – you can use your Gmail account to communicate with friends who have Outlook accounts. But when you change email servers, you have to manually email everyone in your contact list to get them to switch over, while Mastodon has an automatic forwarding service that switches everyone you follow, and everyone who follows you, onto a new server. This is more like cellular number-porting, where you can switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and keep your phone number, so your friends don't have to care about which network your phone is on, they just call you and reach you.

This federation with automatic portability is the fire exit of all fire exits. It means that when your server turns into a dumpster fire, you can quit it and go somewhere else and lose none of your social connections – just a couple clicks gets you set up on a server run by someone you trust more or like better than the boss on your old server. And just as with real-world fire exits, you can use this fire exit in non-emergency ways, too – like maybe you just want to hang out on a server that runs faster, or whose users you like more, or that has a cooler name. Click-click-click, and you're in the new place. Change your mind? No problem – click-click-click, and you're back where you started.

This doesn't just protect you from dumpster fires, it's also a flame-retardant, reducing the likelihood of conflagration. A server admin who is going through some kind of enraging event (whomst amongst us etc etc) knows that if they do something stupid and gross to their users, the users can bolt for the exits. That knowledge increases the volume on the quiet voice of sober second thought that keeps us from flying off the handle. And if the admin doesn't listen to that voice? No problem: the fire exit works as an exit – not just as a admin-pacifying measure.

Any public facility should be built with fire exits. Long before fire exits were a legal duty, they were still a widely recognized good idea, and lots of people installed them voluntarily. But after horrorshows like the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, fire exits became a legal obligation. Today, the EU's Digital Markets Act imposes a requirement on large platforms to stand up interoperable APIs so that users can quit their services and go to a rival without losing contact with the people they leave behind – it's the world's first fire exit regulation for online platforms.

It won't be the last. Existing data protection laws like California's CCPA, which give users a right to demand copies of their data, arguably impose a duty on Mastodon server hosts to give users the data-files they need to hop from one server to the next. This doesn't just apply to the giant companies that are captured by the EU's DMA (which calls them "very large online platforms," or "VLOPS" – hands-down my favorite weird EU bureaucratic coinage of all time). CCPA would capture pretty much any server hosted in California and possibly and server with Californian users.

Which is OK! It's fine to tell small coffee-shops and offices with three desks that they need a fire exit, provided that installing that fire exit doesn't cost so much to install and maintain that it makes it impossible to run a small business or nonprofit or hobby. A duty to hand over your users' data files isn't a crushing compliance burden – after all, the facility for exporting that file comes built into Mastodon, so all a Mastodon server owner has to do to comply is not turn that facility off. What's more, if there's a dispute about whether a Mastodon server operator has provided a user with the file, we can resolve it by simply asking the server operator to send another copy of the file, or, in extreme cases, to provide a regulator with the file so that they can hand it to the user.

This is a great fire exit design. Fire exits aren't a substitute for making buildings less flammable, but they're a necessity, no matter how diligent the building's owner is about fire suppression. People are right to be pissed off about platform content moderation and content moderation at scale is effectively impossible:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well/

The pain of bad content moderation is not evenly distributed. Typically, the people who get it worst are disfavored minorities with little social power and large cadres of organized bad actors who engage in coordinated harassment campaigns. Ironically, these people also rely more on one another for support (because they are disfavored, disadvantaged, and targeted) than the median user, which means they pay higher switching costs when they leave a platform and lose one another. That means that the people who suffer the worst from content moderation failures are also the people whom a platform can afford to fail most egregiously without losing their business.

It's the "Fiddler on the Roof" problem: sure, the villagers of Anatevka get six kinds of shit kicked out of them by cossacks every 15 minutes, but if they leave the shtetl, they'll lose everything they have. Their wealth isn't material. Anatekvans are peasants with little more than the clothes on their back and a storehouse of banging musical numbers. The wealth of Anatevka is social, it's one another. The only thing worse than living in Anatevka is leaving Anatevka, because the collective action problem dictates that once you leave Anatevka, you lose everyone you love:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/29/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms/

Twitter's exodus remains a trickle, albeit one punctuated by the occasional surge when Musk does something particularly odious and the costs of staying come into sharp relief, pushing users to depart. These days, most of these departures are for Bluesky, not Mastodon.

Bluesky, like Mastodon, was conceived of as a federated social service with easy portability between servers that would let users hop from one server to another. The Bluesky codebase and architecture frames out a really ambitious fire-suppression program, with composable, stackable moderation tools and group follow/block lists that make it harder for dumpster fires to break out. I love this stuff: it's innovative in the good sense of "something that makes life better for technology users" (as opposed to the colloquial meaning of "innovative," which is "something that torments locked-in users to make shareholders richer).

But as I said when I opened this essay, "you should do everything you can to prevent fires – and also, you should build fire exits, because no matter how hard to you try, stuff burns."

Bluesky's managers claim they've framed in everything they need to install the fire exits that would let you leave Bluesky and go to a rival server without losing the people you follow and the people who follow you. They've got personal data servers that let you move all your posts. They've got stable, user-controlled identifiers that could maintain connections across federated servers.

But, despite all this, there's no actual fire exits for Bluesky. No Bluesky user has severed all connections with the Bluesky business entity, renounced its terms of service and abandoned their accounts on Bluesky-managed servers without losing their personal connections to the people they left behind.

Those live, ongoing connections to people – not your old posts or your identifiers – impose the highest switching costs for any social media service. Myspace users who were reluctant to leave for the superior lands of Facebook (where, Mark Zuckerberg assured them, they would never face any surveillance – no, really!) were stuck on Rupert Murdoch's sinking ship by their love of one another, not by their old Myspace posts. Giving users who left Myspace the power to continue talking to the users who stayed was what broke the floodgates, leading to the "unraveling" that boyd observed.

Bluesky management has evinced an admirable and (I believe) sincere devotion to their users' wellbeing, and they've amply demonstrated that commitment with capital expenditures on content moderators and tools to allow users to control their own content moderation. They've invested heavily in fire suppression.

But there's still no fire exits on Bluesky. The exits are on the blueprints, they're roughed into the walls, but no one's installed them. Bluesky users' only defense against a dumpster fire is the ongoing goodwill and wisdom of Bluesky management. That's not enough. As I wrote earlier, every social media service where I'm currently locked in by my social connections was founded by someone I knew personally, respected, and liked and respected (and often still like and respect):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

I would love to use Bluesky, not least because I am fast approaching the point where the costs of using Twitter will exceed the benefits. I'm pretty sure that an account on Bluesky would substitute well for the residual value that keeps me glued to Twitter. But the fact that Twitter is such a dumpster fire is why I'm not going to join Bluesky until they install those fire exits. I've learned my lesson: you should never, ever, ever join another service unless they've got working fire exits.

[huellitaa]

₊˚⊹♡ education is hot!

education is literally the most valuable thing in life. please please PLEASE take advantage of that. self concept is important, good looks are important, happiness is important, health is important, but without education we wouldn't even know what any of that even means. ♡

having knowledge makes you magnetic. when you're smart, people will look up to you. and if people look up to you, it means they think about you, they admire you, and you have an influence on them.

life is knowledge. the more you learn, the more you are. knowledge is the fundamental basics to life. nothing is the root of everything but we wouldn't even know what nothing is without education. we wouldn't have language, we wouldn't have concepts, we wouldn't have technology, we wouldn't have the screen you're reading this on. we wouldn't have tumblr 😨

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 1. noting down ur findings

the smartest people ALWAYS note down what they learn, whether it be big or small. if you have lots of knowledge and / or the memory capacity of a goldfish then naturally you may not always remember what you learn. keeping it noted down in any preferably easily accessible format of your choice is so helpful and a very smart choice if you want to be an Intellectual™. notebook, sketchbook, binder, google docs, notion pages, tumblr posts, notes app, anything you like !!!!! just keep it noted down !!!! ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀2. utilising ur resources!!!!

so many people i know and millions of people throughout the world suffer with a crippling addiction to their phones, but what are you actually doing on said phone? you spend ages on your phone, your tablet, your laptop, reading, writing, playing video games, and so on, but even then, are you genuinely learning? are you taking the time to absorb the knowledge placed before you or are you skimming through it all in a mindless cycle of media consumption?

think about how you can utilise the things around you to learn. for example, make all that time spent on your devices useful. research, study, learn in your free time. knowledge is abundance. you can use your local library, your local bookshops, ur school or ur college or ur workplace just to find out more about your surroundings and about the world. it is so much more valuable thank you'd think.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 3. wisdom

wisdom is the highest form of knowledge. to learn is to live so living is the only way you're going to truly learn, if that makes sense. therefore, by using this direct method, you gain the highest manner of knowledge; wisdom. wisdom is not being book smart or knowing how to solve equations or write essays but wisdom is genuine, pure, raw, life experience and life lessons, which, surprise surprise, can only be gained through experience and living your life. go out, try things, get out of your comfort zone, get comfy being uncomfy. you got this. ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 4. social interaction

"nerds dont know how to socialise!!!" okay so maybe i adhere to this stereotype sometimes but social interaction is, however unfortunate it may be, a key part of being intellectual and having genuine knowledge. going back to wisdom and learning through experience, speaking with and networking with and sparking connections with others is a vital way to be educated and informed and cultured along with enhancing your social skills, because we need to know how to interact with others, too. if we can't spread said knowledge through connections and socialising so it can be passed down for hundreds of thousands for years to come then there is no point in learning at all because it'll have no use in the long run.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 5. media consumption

feed ur brain. i cannot stress this enough. read books, fiction or non fiction. i know you've heard this a million times but it's true. read just a random article of interest every day to get your brain working. learn a new word every day, read news reports, letters, interesting blogs, articles, websites, do puzzles, crosswords, wordsearches, memory games, listen to podcasts, audiobooks, watch documentaries, youtube videos, interviews, ted talks, video essays, EXERCISE UR BRAIN

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 6. insights, emotional intelligence and empathy

as i've said before, and i'll reiterate again, knowledge extends beyond simply having book smarts and knowing how to work with letters and numbers. the most powerful method of communication amongst humans is emotion, and being well versed in how to read, understand and communicate said language is only learnt through real life experience and observation of real life experiences where the use of emotional intelligence and empathy come into play. analyse these experiences and note down everything

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 7. question ur sources and BE BOLD

one thing i was taught ever since i was little is that when ur online you need to be veeeery careful with all the information you get fed because there are lots of people out there, esp on the internet, with lots of different intentions and lots of different facts, even if they have good intentions and don't mean to mislead you. always double check whatever ur told with someone you know or on another website or two or a physical yet reliable source if you have one to hand, and cite your own opinions too. you get to choose what does and doesn't get to enter your mind. your mind and your knowledge is yours entirely and only yours to be tampered with and adjusted in any way you'd like.

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 things 2 study and be generally educated on:

social etiquette and politeness

countries and their respective laws, cultures, landmarks etc.

history of your own family and ancestry

languages you're interested in and basic phrases in several languages

information about your dream and / or current career

finances and how to manage your money

business, networking and persuasion

pet psychology and how to take care of them

capital cities and basics about places around the world, esp if you plan on going travelling

something beautiful about knowledge is that you'll never run out of it and it can never be taken away from you. people can take anything from you, but never your intelligence. ♡

all my love! 💖✨💘💗🎀💓

[thesearemycurrentobsessions]

I think this is actually one of the few misunderstandings characters make about Faith that's remotely defensible. Take for instance, the conversation from FH&T:

Joyce: Do you like it [Slaying]? Faith: God, I love it!

Joyce: Why do you love it? Faith: Well, when I'm fighting, it's like the whole world goes away and I only know one thing: that I'm gonna win and they're gonna lose. I like that feelin'.

Or her enthusiasm talking about Slaying earlier at the Bronze with the Scoobies! She makes a clear impression that what she gets out of this gig is Slaying itself.

The problem is that everyone accepts this at face value and leaves it at that. There's no interrogation of why that might be the case. What factors in her life led her to want this? Where is her family? Why did she drop out of high school? No one questions if what she says is even true. (I don't think it is, not completely anyway.)

Nonetheless, the gang does try to get to know her! They try so hard in FH&T that it pisses Buffy off! These attempts seem to get dropped from later episodes, mostly because Faith isn't in them - and whether she's not in episodes like Band Candy or Lovers Walk or Helpless because she's on an "unannounced walkabout" or because they didn't invite her is entirely up for interpretation.

Ultimately, the one who gets to know her best is Buffy, because Buffy's the only one who gets to see another side of her. Buffy's the one who witnesses her instability while fighting, Buffy's the one who sees her fear and vulnerability confronting Kakistos, Buffy's the one who sees that she's still willing to fight the good fight in Consequences, etc, etc. etc. It's hard to say whether Buffy gets to know Faith because Faith only opens up around Buffy OR if Faith only open up around Buffy because Buffy's the only one who tries to get to know her. Personally, I lean toward the former. Oftentimes, Buffy doesn't try to open up to Faith: she doesn't contribute much to their conversation in the Bronze in FH&T and she shuts down the conversation about guys in Revelations (her reasons for not talking much in the FH&T Bronze scene are complicated and either way, no judgement from me on Buffy for not opening up to her. Just making observations about their relationship). When Buffy reaches out to Faith it's usually not on great terms: toward the end of Revelations, Faith already feels like her trust has been broken, in Amends she immediately pegged that Buffy's mom was reason Buffy was inviting her, and anytime after Allan's death carries a weighty feeling of judgement.

My point being, Faith often says things which make people believe that Slaying's all she wants. I think she does so to intentionally hide her vulnerability and desperate desire for meaningful relationships, ie to look "cool". The reasons she and Buffy grow close have much more to do with Faith opening up to Buffy than they do with Buffy making a concentrated effort to get to know Faith. Faith tries to form a deeper connection with Buffy over anyone else because gay because she's the only other Slayer alive. They share something powerful which makes Faith believe Buffy might have the the potential to understand her and want to connect with Faith back.

It's actually a little fucked up, that they just assume Faith with take over for Buffy so she can live a normal life. Like what exactly is Faith getting out of this?

[solar-wing]

⚣ Domestic Living With Jason 🩳

⚣🩳 A/N → I'm physically incapable of writing anything under 500 words. But, this was inspired by my love of compression shirts (especially the Under Armor ones and how I would do exactly this if my boyfriend tried to walk out wearing one). May start a series off this, we'll see. Warnings: Domestic Vibes. Married Energy. Suggestive Langauge. Swearing. Petty Jason.

⚣🩳 Summary → Domestic life is something. Domestic life with Jason Todd is another thing. One moment, you're ready to fight this man. Next moment, you're ready to fight this man. *wink wink* Wait, hold up. Jason, what the hell are you wearing?!

⚣🩳 Words → 1.5K

REBLOGS & replies are greatly appreciated, please! 💛

⚣ ENJOY 🩳

“Jason, hurry up! I need to get back so I can finish this essay.” Y/N yelled from the living room of his and his boyfriend’s shared apartment.

If you asked him a year ago what he figured living with his boyfriend would be like, he’d more than likely answer with a lot of freaking sex. Of course, other things came with it, but that was the first thing that always came to mind.

It also came with a lot of stay-at-home dates. Jason was unsurprisingly a natural homebody and loved to spend his evenings when he could with his lovely boyfriend cuddled against his body while watching a movie or playing a game and munching down on some takeout.

Truthfully, it was nice seeing how Jason was in a domestic situation. It served as a reminder to Y/N that under all those scars, grumpiness, and tough exterior was just a boy who wanted to be loved.

On the other end, living with Jason made Y/N take a long, hard look in the mirror and reflect on all the bad habits he had when living at home with his parents and starting college. For example, time management…

Before he started dating Jason, Y/N was the kind of person who waited till twenty minutes before he had to leave to start getting dressed. Whenever someone would text him and ask for his location, he’d respond telling them he was leaving the house now.

Then, when he was actually leaving the house and they’d text him again, he’d respond saying he was on the freeway. Truly, the best example of what not to do when he wanted to be on time somewhere.

After he started dating Jason though, and especially when they moved in together, Y/N sent a long apology to his parents who had tried for years to teach him better time management. The crazy thing about that was when they asked him why he was apologizing and he explained that Jason’s time management made him look like an angel, they didn’t believe him!

In their eyes, Jason was a saint who could do no wrong. Which was ironic considering Y/N’s dad promised to castrate any man who dared even look his son’s way. And his mom, well, not sure that’s really appropriate to mention.

Yet, when it came to Mr. Jason Peter Todd, he might as well have been hand-delivered from God himself. Maybe it was because his boyfriend could and would be late to anything else in the world (Lord knows Bruce went through hell and back just to get him to be on time for family dinner), but if it was anything involving Mr. and Mrs. Y/L/N, he was twenty minutes early with a gift he picked up from the local Target.

It also could be that Jason was the world’s biggest kiss-ass (when he needed to be) and used that to wrap Y/N’s parents around his finger. Either or…

But now, since they were only going to the gym, Jason was of course taking his sweet time to get ready, which, every passing second was another snap of one of Y/N’s nerves. Truthfully, he would’ve just grabbed his keys and left without him, but the last time he did that, Jason went and bought a steering-wheel clutch to put on his car and hid the keys from him for two weeks.

Another thing Y/N’s parents would never believe about their son’s beloved boyfriend; the fucker was petty as hell.

“I’m coming, babe! Be out in a sec,” Jason yelled from behind their bedroom door.

“You said that five minutes ago!”

“Sorry, I don’t recall. Maybe you imagined it.”

This gaslighting motherfu–

Y/N had to take a deep breath to calm his growing impulsive need to bust down that door and slap the fuck out of his boyfriend’s neck. It didn’t help…

“You can’t hit your boyfriend. You can’t hit your boyfriend. You can’t hit your boyfriend,” Y/N mumbled to himself while tapping his foot against the floor repeatedly to distract himself from the ticking seconds passing by in his mind.

Two minutes later, the door opened and revealed his tall and bulky man looking ever so fresh and handsome. Though Y/N was still irritated beyond belief, the sight of his boyfriend’s handsome face who grew a smile and twinkle in his eyes when he looked at him always managed to dissipate his temper.

Not by much though. Jason’s neck still looked like a very bright and large target just waiting for a good sting from the palm of his hands.

Maybe Tim was right, they were a match made in heaven just off violent tendencies alone.

“That was not a sec,” Y/N reprimanded in a grumble.

Jason’s smile turned into a self-satisfied grin while he walked past his boyfriend to their coat closet, grabbing his abnormally large gym shoes. Seriously, what size is this man’s foot?

“Hey, it’s not my fault you waited till the last day to finish your homework.” He replied while tying his shoe.

“Um, actually it is. Every time I tried to sit down and work on it, you’d either start complaining about how I wasn’t paying any attention to you or you’d get randomly horny and start touching me in ways that shall not be named and I’d end up with your dick inside me.”

Y/N immediately regretted his words when he saw how Jason looked up from finishing his last shoe, a lustful blown look on his face as he eyed his body up and down. Thankfully, he didn’t seem like he was about to act on his impulses as he kept tying his shoe without looking before standing back up.

Why was that hot?

“Sounds like you need to practice self-control, sir.”

Oh, no he didn’t.

“Sir, I was already tempted to smack the back of your neck before. I beg you to not increase that urge.”

“Do it. I dare you,” Jason challenged, standing right in front of him with his towering frame. The tone in his voice and the look on his face were signaling something that Y/N was very tempted to answer, but he had to keep rationality in the forefront of his mind.

“You not worth it,” He responded, side-stepping him while going to grab his jacket.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Sir, don’t get fu–”

It was at that moment Y/N took a full look at his boyfriend, specifically what he was wearing. And while the sight was something he wouldn’t mind staring at, he definitely didn’t want other people staring at him.

“Excuse me, but what in the hell are you wearing?” Y/N asked, still looking him up and down.

Jason looked confused for a moment, also looking at his outfit, not seeing what the problem was.

“Um, a shirt and sweats? Is this a trick question or,”

“Why is it so tight? Who are you trying to show off for?”

This man was wearing a black compression shirt and gray joggers like it was just a regular Sunday. The Lord is watching, how dare he?!

Jason’s smirk immediately came back when he realized what he was really about, “Oh, what? I can’t wear tight clothes now to the gym?”

“Not unless you want me to fight bitches. Because, just in case you forgot, I do fight bitches.”

“Language, or I’m telling mom. And I like it when you fight over me,” He said while grabbing at Y/N’s waist.

He immediately popped the vigilante’s hands off him, “Don’t involve my mother in and hands off mister.”

“Our mother, thank you,” Jason corrected.

“It’s giving incestuous, and last time I checked, there is no ring on this finger and my last name is not Todd.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Y/N was sat.

“I-, that was really hot and we’re gonna move on from that,” Y/N responded, and Jason once again had a cocky smirk on his face. Lord knows this man was more than likely dead serious. He’d drop everything and drive to a ring shop right now.

“Anyway, you need to go change sir. I don’t need them dirty, mud-bathing rats staring at what is for my eyes only.” Y/N responded, pointing back to their bedroom waiting for Jason to move.

“Oh, so I need to go change, but when you were wearing those tiny shorts, showing off what’s supposed to be for my eyes only, I got told to mind the business that pays me,” Jason asked with a laugh.

“Are you on my payroll?” Y/N questioned.

“No.”

“My point still stands.”

“You think you’re funny,”

“I think I’m hilarious, actually. In fact, I’m so funny, I’m going to get the extra small shorts I just got in the mail since you want to play with me.” Y/N turned around and sprinted for their bedroom.

“Oh, I’ll play all day,” Jason mumbled under his breath before throwing their gym bags down to the ground and kicking off his shoes before following his boyfriend into the room.

They did not make it to the gym, but they definitely got their workout in.

☀️ | Jason Todd/Red Hood | ☀️

☀️ | Masterlists | ☀️