#lots of video embeds

[blazehedgehog]

As someone who I know is intricately familiar with Genesis music and the FM synth it uses; why is it that many people (including myself) enjoy the Genesis era Sonic music but when Jin Senoue tries to emulate that sound using Genesis synth samples (Sonic Superstars being the most recent example) it just doesn't sound very good? I know it's literally become a running joke in the community that Senoue uses the Genesis synth too much but it's not like Sonic 1 or 2 had bad soundtracks even though they used the same instrumentation, and Senoue is obviously a very talented composer, so I don't really understand why his attempts to emulate the Genesis soundtracks always turn out so mid.

The general theory I subscribe to is that with the soundtracks to Sonic 1, 2, and presumably even Sonic 3, those games were composed by people who were just writing "real" music. They would pick out real world instruments and write for that sound.

If you've never heard it before, for the 20th Anniversary, Sega put out a compilation soundtrack for Sonic 1 and 2, which included the original demo tracks Masato Nakamura wrote for those games.

Now these are basically just MIDI files, because they didn't need to be anything more than that. But you can tell he was thinking in terms of horn sections, bass guitar, and so on.

Nakamura would submit these MIDI songs on cassette to Sega, and Sega's sound engineers would transcribe those instruments into something that sounded appropriate for the Genesis hardware.

Now, Jun Senoue did the same thing, to a degree. Jun's first major Sonic soundtrack was Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis, and Jon Burton (of Traveler's Tales) revealed Jun's own demo cassette. If you listen to Jun's tracks, they're all done on the Honky Tonk/Rhodes piano. There's no attempt to utilize real world instruments or have any kind of sound diversity. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Instead of writing music for a band, he wrote music for an individual playing a keyboard.

Worse still, it has eventually been revealed as of Sonic Origins that Jun Senoue had very little awareness of how to make Genesis sounding music. Again, he only submitted his songs on cassette. He was not responsible for the FM Synthesis conversion, just the raw notes, which were all written on, and for, a keyboard.

(throwing the rest of this ask under a "read more" tag because it embeds a lot more videos and even some images)

So when it came time for Sonic 4, and they had Jun Senoue do the retro style soundtracks for those games, he was probably pretty out of his depth. He was writing for style of music he did not really have a nuanced understanding of.

So we get this crunchy, grating, disassociated "this is what the Genesis sounded like, right?" sort of sound. The musical equivalent of one of those early 2000's "How to Draw Manga" books: somebody who thinks they know what they're doing, has actual talent in other adjacent areas, but doesn't actually get this particular niche.

This is one of the reasons why I'm actually a little warmer towards Classic Sonic's music in Sonic Forces -- it's not Jun Senoue. Somebody on that project understood enough and had Naofumi Hataya handle a lot of Classic Sonic's music. He has actual experience with chiptunes and wrote something that feels like it belongs in a Sega System 32 arcade game or something.

Not every single one of Classic Sonic's songs are stone cold bangers in Forces, but at least they sound more authentically retro than Jun's attempts, because they were written by someone who knew what they were doing.

Beyond that, I don't know why Jun doesn't just, like... do better, in a sense. I suppose I don't know his composing environment and how easy or hard it is to slot in what he'd need to sound more "authentic." I just know from my own perspective how easy it is to grab a VST or a soundfont for common Genesis/Yamaha instruments.

But even then, more authentic instruments aren't going to solve the problem that this style of music doesn't seem to be his strong suit, even if somebody at Sega keeps pushing him to do it. Thankfully, I think somebody finally realized it, given how Sonic Superstars seemed to be full of his Sonic 4 style fake-retro music and most of it got replaced at the last second.

[augory]

I’ve been skimming John Francis Daley’s (director on D&D: Honor Among Thieves) twitter and I continue to be so completely blown away by the movie’s commitment to practical effects and/or minimized CGI where feasible. I mean holy shit look at all this

[rewuyuu]

take a moment to perceive my current favourite mmd video

[thegalaxytraveler]

Tbh at this point we should go old school and start hosting websites with donation options or wharever and like. go back. maybe even do stuff on neocities or free hosting places

This is mostly about the reddit blackout, yes; you can always pick up a template and save your info- and then upload it for online access i guess? Also doing tables in html is easy peasy

[antirepurp]

a fucked up amount of numbers and statistics in youtube studio. like im not a youtuber by any stretch of imagination but the data it gives you is like. it feels designed to push you into making """better""" """content""" to appease the algorithm and get more ad revenue and idk it feels really disgusting

[britishchick09]

'clarissa gets arrested' in spanish! ;D

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Hey uh I just found this out and I'm FURIOUS but miami zoo has a kiwi bird. Which is fine if they were doing what we do here and keeping it in a darkened enclosure with clear notices to be quiet and not bang on the glass. But instead this shy, solitary nocturnal bird is being kept in broad daylight and people are being allowed to pet it. NZ twitter is out for blood right now. https://twitter.com/zoomiami/status/1637864741954637824

…fucking yikes.

The kiwi I’ve seen in other AZA zoos have been kept according to the practices you describe: dark exhibit on a flipped light cycle, in a signed quiet area. What it looks like Zoo Miami is doing is… not good.

Here’s the link to their tweet with a video about the encounter (so it’ll embed):

The video shows a kiwi out of its exhibit: on a table in what looks like a back room with bright overhead fluorescent lighting. The kiwi has no room to move around and no place to hide as people pet it and reach around it to take selfies.

What do you pay to bother the kiwi four days a week - a species which in NZ is apparently illegal to touch without permission from the Department of Conservation? $25.

Obviously it just started and I don’t know anything more about it than what’s online, but even so, this is such a bad look for an AZA zoo, holy shit. I know a bunch of new ambassador animal rules just got promulgated… I wonder if this meets them. I’ll have to go do some reading. Also, USDA is now promulgating new bird rules (it didn’t regulate birds until just recently, only mammals) so this will also have to pass their muster soon.

The guy who runs Miami’s PR, and manages the animal media like the birth of their first kiwi chick in 2019, is known for big media stunts. I’m not surprised by this but I don’t think it’s going to go over well. There’s a lot of pressure on zoos to offer new encounters and programs to help make up for inflation and pandemic losses but this not how to do it.

I’d honestly suggest New Zealanders who are upset about this contact Zoo Miami formally (more than just on twitter) using the contact form on their website, and maybe even the AZA to express concerns about this program animal’s welfare - as well as the lack of cultural awareness at one of their accredited facilities.

Edited to add: a statement from Zoo Miami is supposed to be forthcoming tomorrow. I’ll update once we have it.

[destinationtoast]

1/3 - Hi there! Three (I think) part ask incoming. You're the main person I know of who compiles tons of interesting fandom stats, so I wanted to ask you about it if you have the time to answer. :) I think a lot about how AO3 works great as a fan*fic* archive, but for other fanworks, like images, audio, video, etc., it's only as good as wherever the media is being hosted. With the way hosting sites come and go, or change their TOS to nuke nsfw or queer content, etc., it makes me wonder

how many broken image links litter AO3 at this point. I know it's not considered the primary place to find fanart, but a lot of folks do post images there—for events like Big Bangs, as standalone art, and even as decorative section breaks, etc. My question is: do you think there's a way to look at, say, works tagged with #fanart (of which there are 99,504 atm) and determine what percentage of those are broken links? From what little I understand, one would have to (perhaps with the use of a simple bot?) try to open any link bordered by the <img src> html, and see what portion of those return an error versus what ones actually load? I suppose it could even be something like looking at fanart posted in 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022 to compare how many older links are broken versus newer links. Anyway, this may be completely unfeasible, but I figured I'd ask about your thoughts! Thanks!

Ooh, thanks for the great question! I took a while to answer because I wasn't initially sure what to recommend and ended up gathering some data to investigate. (If anyone else also has relevant data, please share in the notes!)

I liked your idea of looking at samples different years going back, and I decided to look through 100 AO3 works tagged "Fanart" (or a subtag) that were posted 10 years ago -- as a very fast starting point, I didn't even take a random sample of works, I instead looked at the first 100 multimedia fanworks posted in July 2014. (And August, when necessary; see more notes on methodology at the end.) Please keep in mind that this sample that may not be very representative of AO3 more broadly; to get better estimates, more sampling would be needed. Based on this initial data gathering (and the fact that most fanworks on AO3 were posted within the past 10 years), I would tentatively guess that that most fanart, fanvids, and podfic on AO3 still have accessible multimedia.

Given how many broken links and embeds there are on older webpages, I assumed that a ton of the links from 10 years ago would be broken. But I was pleasantly surprised by the results:

Wow -- 10 years on roughly 90% of the multimedia still works! I was honestly floored; I'd been originally planning to also look at 5 years ago to see how much better that was, but if ~90% are still working 10 years on, 5 years ago doesn't have room to be dramatically better. (However, I'd love to see more follow up sampling across different years to find out.)

There were a lot of AO3 users in this sample who posted multiple works -- some posted as many as a dozen multimedia works in July 2014. I didn't want the results to be overly skewed by any one fanwork creator, so I also redid the analysis with just one work from each unique creator:

Okay, cool, those results are pretty similar. I also did some further breakdowns on this smaller set of works to look at which hosts creators were using, and how many of the hosts were still working:

The most common fanart host used in this sample was Tumblr, then wixmp -- which I think from some very quick googling might be because Deviantart switched to using Wix for image hosting at some point? (i.e., I think most of those artists may have posted their art on Deviantart, then linked to/embedded the image on AO3, and the image's direct URL was was wixmp.) There were a few other hosts at the time that were used by 5+ different artists in the sample, and then there were a whole lot of hosts were used by just one or a few artists.

Most of the 10-year-old fanart is still up for all of these hosting categories! Photobucket is the least reliable of the most commonly used hosts. In the Other category, 25% of the links are broken, but that's still better than I expected (see full host list here).

This is getting long, so I'm moving the breakdowns for fanvids and podfic beneath the cut:

Fanvids were almost all hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or both (the above categories are not mutually exclusive). All the Vimeo links still worked, whether they required a password to view or not. Most YouTube links were working, and the few missing ones had almost all been taken down by YouTube for copyright reasons (according to the errors I got -- I'm not rendering judgment about whether they were actually fair use), rather than by the vidder who posted it. And almost a third of vidders also linked to other hosts besides the big two, but many of those links were broken; 59% still worked. (see full host list here)

For podfic, mediafire was a popular solution 10 years ago, though many podficcers used it as a backup rather than the main link that they shared. A lot of podficcers made use of a fandom hosting site that specialized in podfic -- either parakaproductions.com or audiofic.jinjurly.com. Four podficcers used soundcloud (often as a backup). And once again there were a lot of less-frequently used hosts, often used as backup links; 69% of those still worked. (see full host list here)

Some methodology notes and further thoughts:

For fanvids and podfic (but mostly not from fanart), the fanwork creators tended to provide multiple links, and in those cases, I counted the multimedia as working if at least one of the links was still working.

I counted embedded media and links to other sites that host the media all the same way.

I counted the media as broken if I got a 404 when I tried to visit it, or if a site like YouTube had taken it down due to copyright issues, or if I got an Access Denied message for a site like Google Drive.

I counted the media as working if it required a password that was given on the page (common with Vimeo), or if an embed was broken but there were working links to other sites.

How representative is this data? Well, these samples contained most/all of the multimedia fanworks posted in July 2014; that month, there were 70 fanvids, 135 podfic, and 186 pieces of fanart posted that haven't been deleted since. So it's pretty representative of July 2014 specifically. :) But there could have been, say, a fanwork challenge going on in July 2014 that caused unusual uploading patterns then.

The above data gathering and analysis took me several hours over several days. If you want to follow up, you could do more data gathering similar to what I did (I'm happy to elaborate on my process as needed). Or you could write a bot to do something similar; you could have it fetch more AO3 fanworks and try following the links within each work. However, that would be slightly tricky; I ran across more kinds of errors and complicated situations than I expected (e.g., if a YouTube video has been taken down due to copyright, it still has a working YouTube page; sometimes an embed is broken, but if you open the link within the embed in a separate window, it still works fine; many Vimeo links require a password to test, and it could be hard for the bot to reliably find the password in the surrounding text). So you'd have to program your bot to be able to handle a bunch of different special cases.

Regardless of which path you are considering, if you or anyone else does any follow up work here, I encourage you to start by looking through a bunch of fanworks yourself and deciding which scenarios you want count as "working" vs. "not working," and any other things you want to pay attention to.

Hope that helps, and please feel free to DM me with follow up questions. And if you follow up, please share anything else you figure out in this space!

[ashxketchum]

A new Digimon Adventure exhibition has opened in China!

It's an immersive exhibition with the theme "Forever Young" and it will run until 19th Jan.

Promo posters were released for it over the past month, though they all use art already seen before.

One fan has uploaded a detailed video on Weibo covering all the things on display.

Since tumblr won't let me embed the video, I'll share some photos as well:

Source 1:

Source 2:

And a seemingly finished version of the figurine series based on 25th Anniversary Memorial Cafe art teased earlier in the year was also displayed at the event:

Lots of fun things to look at and of course, China proving once again that no one loves Adventure more than them ❤️

[ohnoitstbskyen]

100 songs to get to know me

I posted this image over on the bluesky, and it got like 100 likes, so now here we are. I was going to write them all up here, but Tumblr imposes a 10 video limit on embeds per post which I find infuriating.

So! You can read the first ten entries here, but you can read the entire list here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

1. ABBA - Lay All Your Love On Me

I genuinely don't quite know if my enjoyment of ABBA is something I came by honestly, or something which is simply genetically engineered into my Scandinavian soul. I remember hearing my mom blasting their songs on the home stereo in my childhood, and the association has put permanent nostalgia blinders on me for all of ABBA's greatest hits. Still, I think the beat is undeniable and the mournful tone of the chorus adds some real melancholy to the dramatic plea at the core of the song.

2. Afenginn - Oestrogenmanipuleret Basilisk

Afenginn describe themselves as "bastard etno-punk" which is probably as good a description as you're going to get. There's a lot of klezmer and eastern European folk influences here, but what is more important about Afenginn's best songs is that they go hard as f*ck and it's an absolute blast to dance to them at a show. They played this the first time I saw them live, and the rhythm comes back every time I hear it again. Good times!

3. Afenginn - Ralli in D Minor

With 100 slots to fill, I am giving myself permission to allocate two slots to Afenginn, and for the same reason. Ralli in D Minor is less of a dance tune to me, and more of a headbanger, but with a sufficiently loud subwoofer and a game crowd, you could f*ing mosh to this.

4. Anamanaguchi - Prom Night

I discovered Anamanaguchi as the composers of the title track to the Nerdist podcast back in the day, and being unfamiliar with the concept of chiptunes, I was drawn in initially by the sheer novelty of hearing the squeaks and bloops of my gaming childhood employed towards rock tunes and combined with "real" instruments.

Beyond the gimmick, though, Anamanaguchi won me over fully with the Scott Pilgrim game soundtrack, and then 2013's Endless Fantasy, where the gimmick of chiptune nostalgia noise (at least for me) finally coalesced into something that felt entirely like its own thing. Plus I'm a sucker for exactly this kind of bright dance pop, and Bianca Raquel's vocals here are a perfect match for the tone of the music.

5. Jennifer Hudson - Memory

2019s Cats is a fascinating fucking disaster. Tom Hooper is the worst director of musicals in my living memory, the abuse of the VFX staff extended beyond brutal crunch and absurd challenge imposed by a director who had no idea what the hell he was asking them to do all the way into an astonishingly arrogant and condescending joke from Rebel Wilson and James Corden at the expense of workers who were the last people at fault for the disaster that the movie became (look in the fucking mirror, Wilson and Corden, your performances were rancid).

Still, the silver lining of Cats is we got to hear Jennifer Hudson shake the world on its foundations with her rendition of Memory. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this performance is transcendent and no amount of institutional failure can dim its quality.

6. Annette Bjergfeldt - Min Bærende Bjælke

Annette is one of my mother's oldest friends, and a prolific singer-songwriter now turned author. I've been going to her concerts since I was a little child, and while I am absolutely not the target audience for any of it, it has stuck with me as part of my musical vocabulary deep into adulthood.

She has experimented with brass band accompaniment a few times, but for my money, nothing quite comes close to the floating, optimistic vibe of Min Bærende Bjælke. It sounds like a very particular kind of lasting romance, which of course is also what the lyrics are about.

7. Hozier - Blood Upon the Snow

We'll get more than one Hozier song on this list, but Blood Upon the Snow stands out to me as a song which easily transcends the videogame soundtrack promotional tie-in nature of its conception. Bear McCreary's hurdy gurdy and lyrics about surviving through adversity by holding on to existence with your teeth and nails... yeah, it hits with me. There's something real in that.

"The trees deny themselves nothing that makes them grow, no rainfall, no sunshine, no blood upon the snow." Something about that feels real.

8. The Beatles - Something

idk if I really need to write anything about George Harrison's most famous love song that hasn't been written more extensively by a million dad-rock enthusiasts before me.

I will say, this is one of the few songs I listen to regularly that justify the expensive audiophile headphones I invest in. There's a LOT to hear on a good, lossless, original mix of this song, if you're the kind of pervert who gets off to listening to a song a hundred times to focus on different parts of the soundscape. (it's me, I am the pervert)

9. Blink-182 - Adam's Song

I discovered a lot of my music taste as a young man from extremely low-resolution AMVs that my friend used to download off sketchy file-sharing sites. Blink-182 entered my musical lexicon through the one above, specifically, piggybacking off of my teenage love of Dragon Ball.

I never really grokked what the lyrics were actually about, until relistening to the song years later, but something about the minor-key wail of the thing really sat with my angsty teenage soul and has stuck with me ever since. I cannot listen to this song without that music video playing in my head, the song will forever belong to Vegeta.

There's remastered versions of this AMV out there, apparently, but if it's not 144p with tinny audio, it's just not right. That's not what the song is supposed to sound like, not to me.

10. Blink-182 - Miss You

Blink-182 is one of those bands I discovered via anime AMVs and listened to obsessively for a period as a teenager (The Offspring will show up later on this list), and then fell entirely out of touch with for years until discovering much later in life that they did, in fact, keep releasing music. I Miss You from their self-titled 2003 album felt, when I discovered it sometime in the early 2010s, like a much more mature and interesting sound from a band which had gotten stuck associated with my adolescent superpower kung-fu fantasies which I was, at the time, feeling a bit embarrassed about.

The song had a resurgence on TikTok a little while ago as a meme template, which made me listen to the albums again, and rediscover yet again that Blink-182 is, in fact, still putting out albums.

---

The rest of the list is here: https://tbskyen.bearblog.dev/100-songs-to-get-to-know-me/

[suikamelon6]

We know you care a lot but you're totally right. Stay away for your mental health. We love what you're making and delivering for us!

A wonderful interview by The Variety with #IWTV #InterviewWithTheVampire #SamReid #AssadZaman #DelaineyHayles #RolinJones #MarkJohnson

Link: https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x92yt2y

[wendynerdwrites]

A Measured Response: A Measured Response

Above please find the video I'm responding to, "A Measured Response" by James Somerton. If he deletes later (and I suspect he may), I will reblog with an embed of a copy of the video.

Also note: Much of this is taken from comments I made on his video. But I believe he may be deleting them. Or I got caught up in the spam filter because I commented more than once out of sheer frustration with what I was hearing.

James,

Okay, I am going to start off with a couple things I will give you credit for:

1) Acknowledging the shitty effect nuking your channel had on Nick's career and prospects. That's actually something that hasn't been discussed much and it is genuinely good of you to volunteer that to your audience. As someone who once had her own portfolio nuked by former partners, that's a good thing to bring up. No notes there. That was a good move.

2) You actually used the word 'plagiarism' this time.

I would also like to say that I am glad that you are safe and I am glad you are still alive.

I'm hearing lots about insurance, and your mental health struggles, and the move YOU chose to make "disrupting everything" and your mom's death, "not citing things correctly", how ADHD apparently made you plagiarize, and how hard things are for you. And how people harassed and doxxed you. How you totally want to prove yourself!

Here's what I'm not hearing about:

1) The harassment campaign you launched against your accusers that literally caused them to go into hiding. Sorry, but you don't get sympathy points about death threats and doxing without at least expressing remorse when you did that to others. You haven't mentioned it once. you also falsely accused OTHERS of sending harassment your way and have not acknowledged it.

2) The multiple transphobic and misogynistic lies you told.

3) The tangible impact of queer erasure YOU ENGAGED IN. You barely mention any of the people you stole from. Believe it or not, James, but those people? They also had lives, and jobs, and obligations. Some of them also had dead parents. Then there are the queer people you erased the identities of, slandered, and insulted. Becky Abertelli had to deal with YEARS of the same sort of harassment you're complaining about because of people calling her straight. And even after she was FORCED OUT OF THE CLOSET, you perpetuated that lie again. And yes, YOU DID, JAMES. PUTTING HER IN THE 'STRAIGHT AUTHORS' CATEGORY IS CALLING HER STRAIGHT, JAMES. THAT'S HOW CATEGORIES WORK. Then when she briefly corrected you, you lied about her repeatedly and inserted nasty little vague comments about her so that you could bait your audience into asking about it and claim she harassed you on twitter for not liking her show (which never happened once. She didnt even bring up you straight-washing her on twitter. It was in your comments section.). So not only did you lie, you went out of your way to create opportunities to lie about her more.

4) The outright dangerous rhetoric you engaged in. Such as:

a) You lied about the AIDS epidemic and generations of actual queer activists who you claimed didn't care about employment discrimination and just wanted to have "big gay weddings" because they were "boring. This is a false and dangerous retelling of queer history, not only isolating new generations of queer people, but also erasing the tangible benefits of the legal benefits you enjoy now, James. THEY WANTED MARRIAGE SO THEY COULD HOLD THEIR DYING LOVERS' HANDS AS THEY PASSED AND ATTEND THEIR FUNERALS, JAMES. THEY WANTED MARRIAGE SO THEY WEREN'T KICKED OUT OF THEIR HOMES AND STRIPPED OF BENEFITS DURING A HEALTH PANDEMIC, JAMES. THEY DID FIGHT FOR EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS, JAMES. THAT'S HOW SEXUALITY BECAME A PROTECTED CLASS. Lying about and downplaying the legal rights these valiant "boring" people fought for misleads current generations of queer people into caring less about their history, the people who have done the most for them, and protecting the legal rights so desperately won.

b) All the gay Nazi shit. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain why inventing facts about all the Nazi secret police and youth counselors being gay and extorting people for sex under the Reich is so insanely dangerous and disgusting, but here's a hint: it casts your own community as being the vile, perverted criminals that THE ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO WANT YOU DEAD (you know, homophobes? Not people on the internet who noticed you plagiarized the Celluloid Closet) perpetuate in order to sell their draconian policies to the masses.

c) all the misogyny. I get it, you want to erase the discrimination against women (and people you claim are women) have faced, especially as queer women. You wanted to pretend Radcliffe Hall was allowed to "carry on with her happy little life." You wanted your audience to believe that. You wanted your audience to shit on women for moral panics you made up. You wanted to erase the queer identity of a woman who had already been through Hell and then pass it off as justified. With the rising tied of renewed misogyny,, incel attacks, and reproductive rights being stripped from us, you really, really wanted to sell the message of women being whiny, jealous bitches who get handed everything, never deal with consequences, and hate people for not liking their work. (TBH, it feels a bit like projection on your part) thank you for spreading so much incel rhetoric and transphobia and making your audience ignorant of the great contributions women have made to LGBTQIA history.

I'd respect you more if you would just own up to the obvious biases you clearly have.

That's not all, but my hands are getting tired.

5) That you were caught lying about the contents of Hbomb's video in your initial patreon response.

6) The worth of the people you stole from.

7) Using Nick's asexuality as an excuse for your acephobic AF bullshit about how ace people apparently never dealt with institutional oppression when they're the most likely to be sent to conversion camp and have had corrective rape used as a "treatment" throughout history. Like, holy shit, James.

8) How you tried to lay blame for your shitty, stolen work on your own audience because "you didn't wanrt to make them and they were patreon requests." You didn't have to keep video requests as a perk. Those people paid over $300 to you for those wids only for you to throw them under the bus.

9) Your complete refusal to update your Telos backers on anything besides announcing new projects that you were using to replace the projects you promised them. You could have gone on Patreon, Indiegogo, Twitter, or your channel, and explained things. Things like this happen. But instead you ghosted and gaslighted.

10) The shit you pulled about Nebula.

11) The shitsquillion dollars you spent on cameras you didn't need when you were also claiming to your patrons about being on the verge of homelessness.

"It's a documentary, no opinion just cited facts." James, you've cited "facts" like "15% of the Hitler Youth counselors were gay", "Radcliffe Hall didn't get punished for writing a book about lesbians", and "there was no fight against employment discrimination" as "facts."

Then there's the part where you're still insisting that the people who told you that you can't make a short film on 3K were wrong. You insist it's possible because you intended to use non-union labor. then two minutes later you admit a movie you put together ended up going way over-budget because you didn't realize how much things would cost.

So the Telos nay-sayers had a point, James. Why are you still acting like they were wrong. Do you just not want anyone to find Dan Olsen's tweets about your finances?

The fact that you think you have any business coming back when all you've ever managed are lies and theft is so hilariously conceited. I get it. You want to be able to "carry on with your happy little life" (the way Radcliffe Hall DIDN'T). You want to go back to being a big youtuber and for everyone to admire you once you manage to go a whole video without stealing from anyone. That's not how this works. You have no credibility. You have caused a huge amount of damage not just to your immediate audience, but also the queer community overall.

You hurt a lot more people than Jessie Gender, James.

"We weren't trying to lie about things." BULL FUCKING SHIT. YOU NOT ONLY LIED ABOUT BECKY ALBERTALLI MULTIPLE TIMES. YOU EVEN MADE AN INDIRECT DIG AT HER SO YOUR AUDIENCE WOULD ASK ABOUT IT SO YOU COULD LIE ABOUT YOUR INTERACTIONS WITH HER AS WELL. YOU LIED ABOUT WHO ACTUALLY WROTE YOUR VIDEOS. YOU LIED ABOUT YOUR CREDITS. YOU LIED ON PURPOSE. AND YOU LIED IN WAYS THAT HURT PEOPLE.

You also lie in your video saying "in the beginning, I thought it was enough to put people's names in the opening credits." No you didn't. You started using those opening credits well after the accusations came rolling in. You even admitted on twitter that in the beginning you weren't "citing my sources yet."

Do I believe much of your bullshit was pure laziness? Certainly. But there can be more than one reason for it. There's no way you knew who Radcliffe Hall was and actually thought she face no repercussions. No one who has ever heard of The Well of Loneliness DOESN'T know all the prints were destroyed. It being a lesbian book that was destroyed by the courts is THE STORY.

You lied when you said you didn't call Becky Albertalli straight. EVEN THOUGH YOU ADMIT TO PUTTING HER IN THE STRAIGHT CATEGORY.

You lied about your "adaptation" of Evil Queens and tinker Bells and the citation and schedule of when you got approval. You got approval after the fact and claiming you got it from the beginning. your own email screenshot proves it.

You lied saying the Evil Queens video was "a direct adaptation of the books" despite half the video being plagiarized from completely different works. You lied about your plagiarism accusations and HBomb's video rehashing old "debunked" accusations on Patreon. You lied about Alexander Avila. You lied about reading/watching a bunch of the media you were "critiquing." you lied about when you started with your opening credits.

These were ALL LIES YOU TOLD ON PURPOSE.

You don't "research", "write", shoot, edit, and post a video with shit like that in it and say it wasn't malicious or intentional. You put these videos out there with scores of lies, many of which were directed at various marginalized groups, and CHOSE to never check if anything you said was true. You don't invent entire fake moral panics "by accident." You don't plagiarize by accident.

Please don't spend forty minutes reciting excuses and then claim "these are not excuses." You're not fooling us.

Also - Leave your poor mother out of this. She already had to die of cancer. Let the poor woman rest.

But thank you for linking your new patreon and telling us all about your upcoming videos! I am glad you have your priorities straight. (that was sarcasm)

Just leave the internet, James. Not LIFE, OBVIOUSLY. Stay alive. But your time as a content creator is done. You have no viability in that area. The fact that you think you can just do this is equal parts entitled and delusional. That you think you can come back so soon makes it even worse. Tell you what: you can try again after it's verified that the people you stole from have been compensated and you properly apologize for everything else.

I will not believe you're truly sorry until you can actually apologize without caveats, excuses, and, yes, lies. Saying you're sorry for "not citing things correctly" is not apologizing for what you did. It's cushioning the actual facts and downplaying your transgression. You have not apologized for the misogyny, acephobia, or transphobia, which, yes, YOU DID. I don't care if you want to claim it wasn't intentional YOU STILL DID IT. You haven't apologized for harassing and slandering your critics.

So no, James, I don't really believe you're sorry. I think you're sorry this blew up and that you have to make a new patreon. I don't trust that you won't continue being misogynistic. I don't trust that if you ever see this comment, that you will actually read it instead of crying homophobia and cancel culture and "wanting you dead."

Admit that you harassed people and that it was awful. Admit the extent. Admit you lied about Becky Albertalli and apologize to her. Admit that, yes, YOU HAVE SOME REAL ISSUES WITH WOMEN and that you are ready to confront them.

I don't trust you to do the right thing here. But maybe this comment will be read by someone who might have otherwise fallen for this and it'll be easier for them to see through manipulation like this in the future.

Just log off, Bro.

[ostdrossel]

A new visitor this morning... The Birdsy AI identified and recorded the clip. I was in a meeting and only saw it later in my Birdsy account. What a magnificent bird! Apparently it is a she, a Sharp-shinned. And she left hungry.

A word about Birdsy... I have been using their cameras since 2019, and I love the convenience of using a camera that is AI driven rather than unsing motion detection. My photo setup is motion activated, and it takes me a lot of time and computer storage to handle and edit the photos. I have used security cams to get close to wildlife before too, but I found it very time-consuming to sift through the footage to see if they captured anything fun. The cool thing with Birdsy is that the AI is trained on wildlife and captures exactly that so you do not end up with tons of “empty” videos. You also don’t have to install emulators or wonky software in order to watch your clips or livestream. With Birdsy, you get an app as well as an online account in which all your videos are saved and sorted by ID and date. And you can share your clips and livestream with others or embed it on your website, like I am doing here as well. In my opinion, nothing beats the convenience of this system as opposed to trail cams or security cams. No SD cards needed, and you are not tied to a setup like the gadgety smart feeders that seem to be all the rage now. You can build your own setup. Check it out on their website birdsy.com. I am streaming there too 😊

[missfrustration]

a psychic walkthrough (reigen x fem!reader) 18+ **WITH AUDIO, NSFW**

A/N: hi friends! this is my first tumblr post, because only tumblr can embed the audio! audio was made with elevenlabs, and will be sprinkled in with the fanfiction. feel free to play or not while you read!

tags: 18+, mdni, pwp, nsfw, first-time sex, loss of virginity, fingering, vaginal sex, praise kink, drunk, boss/employee relationship, mild dubious consent, one-night stand, saliva, talking you through it, disheveled rat man nomnom, audio fic, whats it finna play-WOAHHH

word count: 3.3k

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Drinking straight liquor tonight was not a good idea for you. It made you irrational and impulsive. You would always wake up with half the bottles empty, a killer headache, and always something to think about. 

Nevertheless, you kept calling your boss, Reigen, until he picked up. 

“Mph, hey,” Reigen calls out your name, voice raspy. “What do you need…? Middle of the night, y’know, we have to go to work in the morning.”

You are caught so off guard by the huskiness in his voice that your drunken mind can only freeze the words on your tongue. 

His voice comes out as a growl when it calls your name again into the night. You can tell Reigen is concerned, yet you can do nothing but feel turned on by his stupid voice.

“I… uhhm.” You moan out into the night. Immediately, you close your mouth in surprise and panic-end the call before Reigen can get another word in. You slam it onto the table next to your bed and instinctively curl into yourself out of embarrassment. 

You can’t even pick up your phone when it vibrates off the table–you almost booty-called your boss, for fucks sake! You know Reigen will keep bothering your line, but accepting any call could result in ratting yourself out and ruining your job position at Spirits and Such. There is no way you can do that. 

You neglect the floor phone, taking a nice cold shower to forget your horned-up mind. You don’t bother gathering clothes before turning on the shower and hopping in, feeling the cool water on your hot skin. It almost relaxes you from the dirty thoughts you’ve been having. If only you could tell your boss how you feel, how you want him. Even if you haven’t lost your virginity, you’ve seen enough videos to know what you want–and boy, did you want a lot. 

Okay, that’s enough thoughts about fucking your boss for one night. 

After half an hour shy of meticulously cleaning every inch of your skin, you get out of the shower feeling satisfied and refreshed. Your arm reaches for the fluffiest towel you own, covering your moistened skin. 

You frown at the bare shelf where you usually put a clean change of clothes, now regretting not taking the extra minute to get them earlier. However, you can’t dwell on it much when you hear a noise outside the bathroom.

You freeze when you hear constant knocking on your front door, nearly shitting yourself at the fact it’s past midnight and someone wants to see you.

“Hey, I know you’re in there!” The voice says, calling your name out.

You would prefer if that voice were foreign to you now, but you know exactly who’s at the door. You have half a mind to ignore it when you end up reaching for the knob and slowly peeking an eye into the crack.

It’s Reigen with scraggly hair, bloodshot eyes, and undereye bags. You could tell his clothes were hastily put on, and he seemed out of breath and agitated. 

“Reigen?” You’re nothing less than bewildered. “Why the hell are you here?”

You open the door an inch, forgetting Reigen knows where you live. You remember him taking you home after a work party at the bar because you were way too drunk that night to get there on your own. He must’ve remembered where you were, which is both endearing and inconvenient for the time.

“Me? Are you okay?” Reigen takes the liberty of pushing open the door, concerned about your health yet oblivious to what you’re wearing.

Within the second of bursting open the door, he immediately realized why you cracked the door so narrow. Although your towel is fluffy, it’s barely enough to cover your nipples and crotch, giving Reigen the most liberal view of cleavage and legs that he could ever see. 

Your wet hair drips down to the floor, and Reigen realizes what he’s walked in on. It doesn’t help that he’s already inside your house, the door now shut from his initial push. Under his quick eyes, you cannot deny the feeling bubbling up your stomach. 

“Shit.” He rasps, immediately looking away when he realizes what he’s walked in. “Shit, okay, I’m sorry I- goddamn.”

He turns away his back entirely now, “I’m sorry for intruding, shit, I will–okay, I need to see myself out, now.”

“Hell no. Not when you’ve seen me like this, Reigen,” You say, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. Nevertheless, his head looks away. “Take some accountability.”

“Okay, alright, I’m sorry! You were calling, and I needed to make sure you weren’t dead.” He holds his hands to shake back and forth, then turns to you while covering his eyes. “What the hell happened?”

“Oh, I…” You trail off.

He leans forward and sniffs the air, glancing to your right to see the opened liquor splayed over the kitchen countertop. 

“You’re drunk?”

“I was, but I’m fine now. I promise it was no big deal. I just–”

He removes his suit jacket, “Here, before anything else, let me give you this so you can cover up.”

“No, I don’t want that.” You stop his hands that hold out the jacket, rejecting any part in it. 

“What?”

“I want you, boss.” You grit. You snatch his grey suit jacket before tossing it to the floor and stepping closer.

He looks back at you and blinks a few times, shaking his head.

“No, you’re drunk. You need to go to sleep, seriously.” Reigen groans. His voice contains an edge you can’t quite name, yet he doesn’t seem at all mad.

“I’m not drunk anymore,” You sputter, “And I know what I want, Reigen. I want you. Don’t you want me?”

“Jesus, you cannot just say that to me, especially as your boss.” Reigen covers his face, peering at you between his split fingers. 

“I don’t care. I want you to teach me things you shouldn’t, and I’m ready to learn.” 

“Teach? Wait, are you…?” Reigen stops himself from saying any more, knowing the exact answer when you nod. Reigen stares in shock, slack-jawed in disbelief. “No, there is no way you could be.”

You ignore his remark as your face glows in heat, gripping onto the edge of the towel with a resistance that’s desperate to let go. It only takes the swipe of your hand before the towel's grip succumbs to gravity, draping to the floor to expose your entire body.

“Reigen, don’t you want me?” You seductively say. 

“Yes, God, I do, alright? Now, put something on before I do something I regret, or I cannot promise this will end well.” He covers his eyes again, feeling for the doorknob behind him. 

“Why don’t we test that?”

You take his tie in your clutches, using the brevity of alcohol to do your mind’s bidding. Your arm yanks Reigen over to you until he practically topples over you in a passionate and hastily kiss. At the last minute, he stops the fall by slamming his hand on the wall right over you, making your knees buckle into an awkward stance. 

His lips feel so warm against yours, with both dehydrated from the effects of the long night. Chapped lips caress chapped lips, and you hook your arms on the back of his neck as your body thuds against the floor, subsequently taking Reigen with you. 

You wouldn’t think he would follow you to the floor so freely, immediately towering above your deliciously bare frame. His arms are planted on both sides of your head as he takes the lead in the domination of tongues. You feel caged between the arms you work under, yet the treat that is his guidance feeds you. Your lips, which have seldom kissed before, effortlessly mesh into his as he puts his weight against you. 

It’s clear what’s ahead of you and your boss, and no amount of forgetting or reasoning will cleanse your questionable business relationship to a blank slate. Right now, it’s about filling that craving for you and, ultimately, your boss. Reigen must’ve had the same thought when his lips left yours, and he started to get up.

“We’ll think about us after. Right now,” Reigen gets off you, crouching at your side before scooping you in his arms. “I’m taking you somewhere else.”

“Second door to the right,” You whisper, letting him carry you to your bedroom. 

He kicks open the door, promptly placing you on top of the bed and standing back up to undo his tie. The way he rips off that pink tie you see on him every shift before plucking open his shirt buttons from top to bottom has your mind spinning, especially when his eyes drink in your body every second he’s not touching you. By the time he gets down to his boxers, he’s back on you. 

“I didn’t know that drinking made you a liar. I’m sorry, but there is no way you're a virgin.” Reigen snorts, caging your body between his arms once more.

“Why is that so hard to believe, dumbass,” You mumble.

“Come on. We see each other every weekday, and I find it hard to believe that someone hasn’t put themselves between these pretty little hips before. I cannot be the only one, much less the first.” His knees nudge between your legs, slightly opening them. 

“As truthful now as I am about this,” You forcefully take his hand, pressing it on your exposed, hardened nipple. His hand stays there, eyes and hands now frozen from the contact. 

“Fuck.” Reigen snaps out of his hypnosis, groping your breast, taking his fingers and gently rolling the hard nipple. You pant from the foreign sensation. He watches your reaction like a dog, almost hysterical in how his eyes widen. 

His mouth takes your lips with force, then follows to the neck as he nibbles down the skin, then to the apex of your breast. Reigen’s lips coddle your areola as his tongue teasingly flicks the nipple, and his hands slowly caress the small on your waist down to the wideness of your soft hips. 

Reigen leans back to gaze at all your delicious curves, particularly the ones in between your legs that ache to feel him. He gently pushes your left leg to the side with his knee before sighing. 

“I’m not sure it’ll fit. Not right away,” Reigen starts. “So I’ll do this instead. Do you need me to guide you?” His fingers lift, showing you what he plans to start with. The display of his fingers alone makes you tremble, yet you nod your consent. 

He starts his lessons on you. The only tool he needed to show you was your body right now. You are so wet that he wouldn’t even think of lube. Not for his fingers, at least. He still felt the need to dip his fingers into your mouth. 

“Lick them, and keep your eyes on me,” Reigen says.

You obey. You flick your tongue around the pads, tasting the saltiness of his skin. You’re sure he darted straight over here when he woke up from your calls. Your mouth lingers on him, lubricating his fingers with your spit until he’s satisfied. 

“Take them for me. Let me know if it’s okay first.” You nod, and he dips his arm down.

One finger starts to slowly enter inside you as you shift your body at the feeling. Reigen carefully studies your body language. After a few moments of his first finger entering, he puts another in. 

“Damn, nobody has ever touched you like this, have they?” Reigen asks, looking into your widened eyes as his fingers start to move. He seems almost delighted by the thought of deflowering you, causing that desire to transfer to your core tenfold.

“No, Reigen. I wanted you… to be my first.” You cannot deny the aches you suffer at night after your shifts with Reigen or the long nights you endure your lust for him, yet you would never surrender your own hands to take care of it. 

“How does it feel?” His fingers gently pry your tight hole, causing your back to arch, giving Reigen’s eyes a generous view of your body.

“So, so fucking good,” You pant, gripping the wrist that invades your pussy from your lust. You make it move at a faster pace now, holding onto his arm like it’s a damn stress ball. 

“Good girl. Tell me if I need to stop.”

You feel your insides writhe in you when his fingers start to curl, constantly pushing in and out of you in a calculated rhythm. He knew exactly how much this made your body hot. His constant eyes that glance down your body up to your face tell you he’s enjoying himself, yet his thoughtful eyes still check yours, ensuring you’re okay. 

“You’re so wet for me.”

You can hear your pussy squelch now with your juices. All for Reigen, all for the man who pleasures you. Even then, it’s not enough for Reigen as he palms his erection through his boxers.

“It’ll be painful if we don’t use lube,” Reigen says. “Do you have any?”

“No,” You whine in between huffs.

“Shit…” Reigen mutters, slowly pulling his fingers out, assessing the liquid practically dripping down his fingers. “I don’t know if you want to go farther then.”

“We can go without it,” You whine, rubbing your legs together from the emptiness. 

“Are you sure you want that?” He asks. “That’s going to be a lot for you.”

You pull him in for another delicious kiss, properly exploring his mouth before answering.

“I can take it.” 

Reigen leans over you, taking his hand to thread through your fingers. He uses his other hand to free his cock from his boxers. Suddenly, you realized why he was so worried about you– over it not fitting. 

“Fine. Squeeze me as hard as you need to, okay?”

You gulp down your anxiety nod, opting to replace it with your hunger from his dick as he positions himself. Reigen’s tip protrudes in between your legs; he takes his hand and starts adding pressure against your slit. 

Your pussy can only take the very top of his penis before you begin to feel pain, worry bubbles in your stomach. 

Almost on cue, Reigen can tell what the disturbed look you sport means, the uneven rises of your chest, and the squeezes you put on his hand.

“Breathe, pretty girl. I know you can do it.” Reigen orders.

His words cut into the pain, helping you recoup your senses as he presses on; the pain persists as you take his head, which was the thickest part of him. The pressure inside feels foreign, and the pain continues when your pussy swallows his shaft. 

“You look so good taking me in. Keep going.”

His words make your pain subside when he pushes his whole cock inside you. After letting you adjust to his length, he looks into your eyes, asking if he can keep going. 

“I can take it.” You repeat, blinking away the water that gathered under your waterline. You moan out, “please, Reigen.”

Reigen looks at you like he’s never seen anything so beautiful. “Good girl.” He whispers. 

He’s three pumps in when you start panting like a dog, and your hand is still entwined with his as he squeezes. 

“Open your mouth for me.” You instantly oblige to his request, opening your mouth with tongue hanging out.

His lips purse slightly before puckering, releasing a string of his saliva into your mouth; your eyes widen before taking the gracious liquid into your mouth, tasting it like it’s the last drops of water on Earth. You practically growl as you pull his body down to you. 

“Feels good?”

He has his answer when you crash his mouth into a deep kiss, tongues exploring each other so hard that it’s scandalous. You moan out into the cavity of his mouth. “More,” you pant. 

“That’s my girl.”

His arms tuck under your torso, his hands grip your shoulder caps, and he leans his head near the crook of your neck. Your thighs spread out more until his shaft has full access to your pussy. 

He thrusts the way he’s been earlier, but with the position he has you in, plus the extra spread in your legs, his entire cock claps into your hole, earning a loud whimper out of you. Despite the volume and jolts your body takes from him, you can’t help but encourage him with the siren cry of your voice.

“That’s it. Let. it. out.” He grunts in your ear, immediately picking up a devil's pace. Your sopping wet pussy sloshes like thunder each time he thrusts, balls slapping against your ass. Your arms and legs wrap around him in a vice grip that he has a hard time reeling back each thrust of his sex into yours.

Reigen clicks his tongue. 

“Tch, you’re making it hard for me not to pull out right now.” 

You don’t think about anything else but the overwhelming sensation that has taken over any other feeling. You have no control over it, yet you feel no reason to stop it as it builds and builds.

“I… I feel funny.” You breathe out, clawing at his skin with your nails, you can’t stop yourself from the sensation. 

“Ah, I know. I can feel it.” 

“What is it? What do I-” Reigen kisses you again, and you let out an accidentally loud moan into his mouth as his lips take you.

“Follow it for me, pretty girl,” Reigen whispers. His hand darts down, assaulting the neglected bud at the apex of your pussy. Your mind goes blank as white-hot fire engulfs your core. 

“Cum for me.”

The overwhelming sensation takes over your body like a train, rushing through every vein like electricity. Your hands latch onto his hair, roughly pulling at the soft locks and scratching down his back. A noise you’ve never heard from your throat rips out like a tidal wave, crashing and chipping away at any thought you could’ve had that didn't include him. Dear God, was this a delirious feeling.

Reigen’s voice didn’t carry to your ears when he talks you through it. The soft whispers of him, “I know, I know.” are lost from your waves of pleasure. 

His dick and balls clap into you like thunder a few more times before quickly pulling out of you, groaning as he uses his hand for the rest. His seed gathers onto his fingers shortly after, dripping onto the top of your stomach as he leans over you. 

Your eyes meet, gazing into each other’s eyes with bated breath, watching your faces once contorted, now relaxing to faces of bliss. After a moment, you get up to get some tissues across the room, leaving Reigen to wipe his cum off of the both of you. 

“Fuck.” You moan out. “Please tell me it always feels like this.”

“It does now,” Reigen catches his breath, giving you a goofy smile and tossing the tissues aside. “It sure as hell does now.”

You giggle at him, and he ungracefully, dramatically flops to your side–in proper Reigen fashion.

“Well, I’m calling out tomorrow.” He whistles, absentmindedly sweeping his fingers on the skin of your stomach, still partially covered in his cum. 

“It’s not like you’ll be hungover tomorrow morning.”

“You’re too dense for your own good. Look, when I have you in your own bed? I’m not letting you go anytime soon. I really need to reevaluate our business relationship when I leave this room.” 

“I guess I’ll have to keep you here then,” you jest.

“Hey, I’m not complaining.”

[changes]

Friday, June 23rd, 2023

🌟 New

On web, we added a more helpful and specific error message if you’ve used an invalid URL in the “Content source” field.

On web, the “Enable colorized tags” option now also applies to tags that are trending and active (green) tag filters on the “Your tags” dashboard tab.

In the post meatballs menu on web, we changed the “Archive” option to “View Archive.”

There is a new version of the Answer Time page on web.

Blazed posts are now being served in a few other places we were already serving non-Blaze ads: The “For You” dashboard tab, the “Your Tags” dashboard tab, on the “Staff Picks” tab in Explore, in search results, in tag results, in Blog View, and on post permalinks.

We’re no longer filtering out reblogs with comment from the notes view just because they have a link.

In the mobile apps, you’ll now receive a push notification when a poll you voted in ends so that you can check out the final results.

🛠 Fixed

On web, the graph on the Activity page is now a tiny bit narrower, resolving an issue where the labels on the X axis could be cut off at some window sizes.

On web, we’ve removed the unnecessary vertical and horizontal scrollbars from the login/sign up page.

On web, we now show a cover on reblog notes that are flagged with community labels, if the corresponding user setting is set to blur.

On web, we fixed a bug that made it impossible to edit your blog’s appearance more than once without refreshing the page.

On web, when viewing the “Today” tab on the Explore page while logged out, the name of the browser tab now accurately reflects the page contents.

We fixed an issue that made the settings page have very weird spacing between items. This issue was only affected folks using Tumblr in a web browser on a tablet (or on a computer, if the browser window was approximately the width of a tablet).

On web, when navigating directly to the permalink of a post with a community label, we now show an overlay over the post if you have your community labels settings set to “hide.”

🚧 Ongoing

We’ve made a lot of headway in our investigation into ads that are autoplaying audio in the mobile apps. Please let us know if you’re still encountering any ads that play audio unprompted.

Video embeds from Vimeo are not rendering. We’re investigating this.

We’re working to fix an issue affecting the blog network where some blog URLs in posts will open in the blog network (username.tumblr.com) while others will open in the dashboard (tumblr.com/username), even when the blog in question has a blog network page.

🌱 Upcoming

In the next version of the iOS app, we’ve restored the ability to double-tap to zoom on a lightboxed image. We’re working to add it to the Android app as well.

In the next version of the Android app, we’ve fixed a bug that prevented audio from being played until you allowed notifications.

In the next version of the Android app, we’ve fixed an issue that prevented the “Get notifications” option from appearing after following a blog until you refreshed the page.

The next version of the iOS app contains a fix for the bug preventing Voiceover from reading any post content other than the post’s tags.

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.

[pillowfort-social]

Site Update - 8/4/2024

Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been a little while, but we have a new site update for you:

New/Improved Features

Added multiple improvements to our moderation system to make the system more convenient & effective to use for our moderators. We also added a new system to proactively check uploaded user content for Child Sexual Exploitation Material using Microsoft’s PhotoDNA service. We’ve updated our Privacy Policy to reflect this addition. 

Made various improvements to the site’s security per the recommendations of our latest security audit.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug that made posts inaccessible to view or edit in certain circumstances (specifically if the post type was Video or Embed, but no media link was provided during post creation).

The drop-down list of a user’s Communities shown when creating or reblogging a post is now properly alphabetized.

While this may seem like a small update, the additions we made to our moderation system were fairly complex and overall involved over 450 changed or added lines of code! It’s just unfortunate that the effects of these changes will be mostly invisible to our end users as they concern the behind-the-scenes workings of our moderation system. Just trust us that it involved a lot of work. 😅 However, the good news is with this update complete we can get back to working on other projects such as the Progressive Web App that many of you have been waiting for. Thanks as always for your patience, and we will keep you posted on our progress via the dev blog in the meantime.

Best, Staff