#profit of doom

[shepscapades]

shep. i finished xisuma's s8. i am plagued with so many thoughts /silly

Oh my gognfjgmgimfggfmgnmfdnffgh it’s. It’s so much. I have so much to say and so many thoughts they make me so crazy. They make me so crazy THEY MAKE ME SO CRAZY IS THIS THING ON CAN ANYONE HEAR ME

[ananke-xiii]

Okay, I think I can finally share this now.

In my version of "Moriah" Chuck orders Jack to kill Castiel with the promise of bringing things back to how they were before all the mess they're in now, Mary included. Jack starts panicking and crying and is clearly being played but he's in no state to rationalize things so he starts blurting out all kinds of stuff and eventually resolves to actually do it. Sam and Dean are forced to watch by Chuck and are totally incapacitated just like us, hypothetical viewers, are made to watch Jack's tragedy as it unfolds.

But Castiel is okay with that and actually plans to do the deed himself in order to avoid at least this one pain in Jack's life so he comes close to Jack and holds his face in one hand while the other is ready for the blade. He needs to tell him one last thing before the end. They're both crying but somehow Cas find the courage to recite a different type of blessing over the children, one that of course doesn't involve God and it goes something like this:

Jack, don't cry. It's okay, it's okay.

I need to tell you something, Jack and I need you to listen carefully, okay? Okay, good.

Being elected as your father has been the greatest joy and honor of my life. Hey, it's okay, shhh, it's okay, listen to me.

It was a joy so great that I got scared, Jack. I'm sorry Jack but I got so scared. I didn't know it then but it was this gnawing fear of losing it all, of losing you, that made me make... many mistakes. It was this fear that prevented me from understanding who you really are, from seeing the truth. So here it is.

Jack, you were, are and always will be such a luminous, beautiful and important presence in this world. Ah, as a matter of fact, in any world. Because you're... you. And you are... amazing.

No, no, no listen to me now, please, shhh, it's okay: You have to know that whatever happens in your life, I will be there for you. No matter what, I will be by your side. If things will go wrong, I'll be there to give you my energy. If things will go right, I'll also be there to give you even more energy.

You must never forget that you're loved, Jack. Oh, look at you: my son...my son... I love you. So much.

Cas, in an instant, is ready with his angel blade but it's in this moment that the Shadow erupts into the world to take Castiel away: no reasoning, no strategic plan, nothing. The moment of happiness is the moment of unconditional love.

Chuck's frantic because this "unconditional love" thing wasn't in his script and yells that it was not supposed to happen this way, that he gave them the possibility to access everything they ever wanted, the price was just one self-loathing, doomed-anyway angel but it still wasn't enough for them, was it?

It's also the moment where Sam, briefly freed from Chuck's powers, gets his lucidity back and decides to pull the trigger on Chuck (and himself). In the background, Jack's screaming and crying so much that the mere force of his screams is enough to resurrect the whole cemetery but Cas is not coming back to him.

Chuck is wounded by Sam (who's also hurting in return) and is forced to flee. Dean is also wounded beyond repair and is like turned to stone and almost can't breathe because he's living, again, one of the worst moments of his life as we go back to a distorted, more messed-up version of s12 finale and to the beginning of Jack's tragic story.

Jack is spiralling and he's out of control and out of himself as he starts opening woundsrifts after rifts through dimensions and worlds looking for Chuck, looking for the Empty, looking for whatever comes first at this point because he's moved by the dangerous, unpredictable and explosive bomb that is revenge spurred by love. Until Billie finds him.

[romanceyourdemons]

kind of funny to me how 1930s shanghai businessmen have been the villains of films from both sides of the pacific from the 30s to today, but they’re the villains in western film because they’re chinese, and they’re the villains in chinese film because they’re businessmen

[swashbucklery]

Anyway I am going to keep enjoying writing every single fic idea I have for this dumb beautiful show forever. This is a great reminder to consider pursuing archives of your favourite media, should you feel something is important to be able to rewatch in future.

[thisnoisemademe]

When the moon becomes red to guide the risen dead, this means God's turned his back on you.

[thoughtportal]

good morning good news collective action works!

[dontbotherwiththepronunciation]

Kind of whiny anti-got post because I’m still thinking about Jeyne and I’m slowly linking her to other characters from other media:

In regards to the other post. I’ve been thinking about this and I believe my strong affection for Jeyne Poole is linked to my affection for Wakaba Shinohara and the way the narrative plays with her emotions by having her be a social circle filler character, only to then suddenly deconstruct the character archetype she embodies, be given a plot and complex emotions and now that the audience is feeling tremendously for her, transforming her back into the social circle filler character.

The difference is that with RGU this is done purposefully and it is intended to make us feel the tragedy of Wakaba and her perpetual sense of inferiority over Utena and Anthy. It is intentionally meant to be ironic and in the very end the narrative still somehow subverts this by letting her turn into a car too (haha now I fully alienated anyone who hasn’t seen Utena but was still reading this) and being a pivotal element in Utena & Anthy’s liberation.

Jeyne doesn’t. Her situation isn’t an intentional critique from D&D. It’s them wanting to profit from the sensationalist rape plot without having to pay another actress or making a narrative more complicated by taking off the Stark goggles and showing Theon as a victim of them.

[spellsparkler]

row's dearest desire is to be in a deeply codependent relationship. this is why the emperor has such an easy fucking time

[mwagneto]

okay no offense to ppl who like these characters but how does doom patrol have time for this like it's essentially an entire episode of filler. like it was nice to see danny again but this felt like this should've been a B plot or even an A plot but not like.... an entire episode

[lord-radish]

Tens of thousands of people have been fired in the tech sector in the last six months alone. With the economy the way it is, and with people who are already unable to get a job, I wonder how an extra 20,000+ jobseekers are going to have any luck finding work.

[gaeko-san]

Pls don’t push any algorithmic thing be the default way to browse Tumblr by default. I’m staying here because of the chronological timeline. If we’re going to lose it, well I don’t have any reason to stay here and I will juste delete my account. I’m starting to get used to having to break from a social network because of his shitty decisions.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

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

The Diagnosis

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

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

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

Our Guiding Principles

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

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

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

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

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

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

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

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

Actions & Next Steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

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

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

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

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

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

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

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

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

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

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

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

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

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

Actions & Next Steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

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

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

[mollyjames]

Even in food service, there is the demand for exponential growth. Each store has a profit target you're expected to hit every quarter. Each quarter the target gets bigger and bigger. The only way to make sure you hit or exceed that target is to increase sales or cut costs. Sales can only go so far though, so at a certain point there is the understandable temptation (not justifiable, but understandable) for your manager to start cutting hours. Once they do, your location has entered a Death Spiral.

The thing about the Death Spiral is it is nearly impossible to escape. It starts innocuous enough, with a few hours getting shaved off every week. And true enough at first you probably didn't need those hours. They were the slack, the extra hands that helped distribute the work and made it easier on everyone. You might not even notice they're gone. Maybe the morning rush is a little harder to handle, maybe there isn't as much time to chat as there used to be. But on the whole nothing has changed. You're still hitting your sales quota and, hey, everyone seems to be working a little harder. That's good, right?

Then the next quarter rolls around. You exceeded your quota. Upper management is very excited. But now your new quota is even higher than it would have been if you had simply performed to expectations. You raise prices a bit, push more expensive drinks, and sure, cut a few more hours. Bit by bit the slack gets tighter. The fat gets trimmed. All because continual growth, continual improvement, is not just demanded, but expected.

The endgame of the Death Spiral is the expectation that every worker will operate at 100% efficacy 100% of of the time, and that nothing will go wrong ever. It never reaches this point, as any food service worker will tell you, shit goes wrong. Service gets worse, you lose a few customers, and you miss your quota. This is the point of no return, because the only way to solve the problem is to add more hours. But there's no way upper management will approve spending more money. On a failing store? Don't be ridiculous. Maybe get those numbers up and we'll consider adding hours back. But the only way to get those numbers up is with no hours. It's a Catch-22. You're trapped. Slowly, inevitably, the store fails, and then closes.

The Death Spiral is a doomed strategy, but it is the one corporations push in response to investor pressure. It tricks workers into more work for the promise of relief later, if they do well and succeed, not realizing they'll only be asked to do even more next time. So how do you fight it? Know your worth. Don't let anyone give you more work without some kind of kickback. Don't fool yourself into thinking that being indispensable will lead to a reward later.

But the best defense? Join a union.

[mckinlily]

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

[friend-of-ferret]

Not feeling great about the SDCC Dr. Doom announcement.

[19-bellwether]

Disney vs. DeSantis is so funny because it's like. Neither side even wanted to get into this. Here's how it's supposed to go: Politician does something stupid. Corporation disavows politician after public pressure. Politician disavows the disavowing. Nothing changes for either party.

But then the Florida governor got stars in his eyes. He saw an opportunity to bolster his standing before the presidential primary. He wanted to be the one who took on The Mouse and won. So in retaliation he decides he's going to tear down the decades-old agreement Disney uses to govern Disney World's district.

And just like that, Disney's batshit insane legal department turns towards Florida like the Eye of Sauron spotting the ring at Mount Doom. They smell lost profit. They smell blood.

Disney will use any and every strategy they've accumulated over the last century of lobbying congress and DeSantis can't back down lest he admit Mickey Mouse beat his ass. He's lost control of Disney World's district even more than he already did. Now he's getting sued.

This all started because Disney was pressured into backtracking their political contributions to Florida and disavowing the Don't Say Gay law. Now they're fighting for something they actually care about: their profit margin. Disney is not an ally to queer people and they're an enemy to progressives, but damn am I rooting for them to keep humiliating the greater evil for the time being. This is high comedy.

[starpros-sunshine]

Sometimes I think about the fact there's a movie out there that not only stars Elvis Presley as the main character but also includes, as the main antagonists role, the evil cousin of Elvis character. Who is, of course, also played by Elvis Presley but blonde.