starting to suspect that tech bros actually just don’t know what reading is
I know I just reblogged this but I think the really important takeaway here is that this techbro is not genuinely asking “how can we improve fanfiction?” What he’s asking is “how can we tap into this massive market?”
I keep thinking about how many of these chat bots are free—for now. And of course they are! It’s a classic marketing technique when you’re trying to get your foot in the door with a novel product: let folks use it, let them get used to it, then start charging for it. You don’t have to look any further than streaming to see a very recent example of how this happens.
And it’s going to happen with AI.
There’s nothing these assholes love more than making money off of other people’s hard work. But you can’t legally charge for fanfic! So how do you get around that? You charge for a chat bot (which you trained on other people’s fanfic). You can’t charge for the content, but you can charge for the thing that produces the content.
AI is theft, and there are a whooooole lot of people gleefully looking to make a buck off of our hard work.
Don’t use AI, don’t feed AI your favorite fic writers’ and artists’ work, don’t read AI fic, don’t engage with it. And if you do, well, I can’t force you to give a shit about other people, but AI is a paywall being built, brick by brick, between you and the things you love. Stop slathering on the mortar.
Reblogging for yet another coherent anti-plagiarism argument as well as another reminder for folks to lock your AO3 fics
Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you’re gonna search for a role that’s in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn’t seem like a bad time.
See that easy apply button? Don’t hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you’re gonna want to go to the company’s website and check their careers page.
Oh? That job doesn’t exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.
Great you found another job, you’re on the company’s career page and the job exists!! So you’re going to need to make an account on the career page website. They’re using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job’s workday page.
Now you’re going to upload your resume. That’ll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.
Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn’t even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You’ll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section
(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don’t sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!
Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.
Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You’ll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn’t have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(
Time to start again and try not to kill yourself!
Listen to me
Listen very closely
The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they’re suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it’s a game.
For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they’d get when I’d tell them why, anyone who wasn’t shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.
Firstly, what you’re gunna do is pick a job sector. You’re gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you’re a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You’re gunna look at the job description, I’ve picked out a few for bookkeepers below.
Now what you’re gunna do is you’re gunna look for “buzz words”, or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I’ve highlighted some, but not all in my examples below
Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!
Now that you’ve got your buzzwords, you’re gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you’re gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:
- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner
- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data
- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%
These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That’s something you’ll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.
Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You’re gunna channel your inner “IDGAF” And you’re gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for “Apply on Indeed” and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.
Don’t waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you’ve now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you’re piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.
So go, try this, and see how it works for you.
Some additional things to consider:
- Add random shit in your resume, I added my “Board Game Club” (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there
- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out
- if you don’t have a degree that doesn’t mean they won’t pick you, twice now I’ve come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps
- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you’ve only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.
- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don’t need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones
- I’m serious on that last one I’ll eat your fucking resume
HERE’S HOW TO WRITE A COVER LETTER FROM SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE IT PROFESSIONALY:
Look at the job description.
Identify what they want examples of like “ability to multitask” or “can work across teams to achieve success” or “can work on a budget”.
Pick three.
Write this:
IF YOU CAN FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Dear [Name]
IF YOU CAN’T FIND THE NAME OF A HIRING PERSON: Fuck the usual salutation and just roll directly into “I was very excited when I saw this job application. I feel I am a great fit for this role.”
Now, look at the three things you chose from their list of what they want. Write a paragraph like this.
I am an adept multitakser who routinely handles several projects/deadlines/needs (whatever). In my current position I [multitask example]. In my previous work, I [second example].
SECOND PARAGRAPH SAME AS THE FIRST DIFFERENT THING THEY WANT BUT NOT ANY WORSE:
In my current position, I work with multiple teams daily, including [name any team you have waved hello to in the hall] and through my work we have [list an accomplishment that required multiple teams].
THIRD PARAGRAPH HERE WE GO AGAIN:
Staying in budget is something I am very familiar with. When I worked on [team], my contributions [list] not only brought the project in on time but under budget by [number]. I have also brought in other projects under budget [examples].
AND NOW THE FINALE:
Thank you for your time in reviewing my cover letter and resume. I look forward to discussing my qualifications and interest in the role with you at length. I can reached at [phone number] and [email].
Sincerely,
[NAME]
And remember, any question that is looking for a negative story (“Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker”) should ALWAYS be presented by you as “I do have a story for that, and I’m pleased with how I handled it.” and then you focus on the all the positives in that situation. So, state what the problem was, and then how you fixed it, and then how fixing it improved your working experience. For example:
“Well, I worked with a man named Bob, and he never answered any emails he got after 3:00 PM, so if I had a question after 3, I’d start a draft email and just add to it if i had further questions. And then I’d schedule it to send at the top of his workday. He started earlier than me, and I’d usually come in to a reply from him with the answers I needed when I first sat down for the day. I actually had another co-worker who was having trouble getting Bob to answer questions, and I said, "Oh, are you sending them after 3?” and when she said yes, I shared my own process so it was easier for her to get information, too.“
You see how you acknowledge there was an issue but put most of the focus in your answer on the fix? That’s the sort of answer they’re looking for. The "tell us about something bad at work” questions are about weeding out people who will take any moment to go into a full-on complaint about anything. Any questions that SOUND negative are about wanting to hear your POSTIVIE ability to manage conflict and difficulties.
I’m trying not to reblog posts on this blog but I feel that this is important to post here.
on a related note:
And for the people asking “Well if you don’t support it irl then why would you like it in fiction?!” Because when it’s happening irl real people are suffering and dying and that’s horrible and I’d never want that. But when it’s fiction, when no real people are being hurt or killed, it’s interesting to explore the experience, the effects it may have, and to an extent experience the emotions involved without actually having to experience the horrible thing. You explore scary, dangerous things from a safe distance.
Because it’s how stories work.
Because it’s how stories work.
I’m reeling that the original post was from 2013 but more than a decade later, some people still don’t understand that fiction can be a safe place to explore dark topics that you don’t want to see or experience in real life.
Sometimes bad things happen in stories, that’s just how stories work.
To be clear, I don’t have any news about any impending doom. But I’ve heard a bit more about what’s going on with staff after the layoff of last week, and there are even less people than I thought still working here.
I don’t think even the current staff know what’s going to happen, but honestly, I don’t see how the high ups could even pretend to intend to keep this place open while virtually unstaffed.
And of course, if the most despicable thing happens, you can find me at @javi@goblin.band from any fediverse platform 🤷
for reference, OP is a former employee of Tumblr who tries to keep up to date with tumblr’s inner workings. please back your blogs up.
In your blog settings you have the ability to initiate a blog export, and this will generate a backup for your blog.
Fair warning though, if you’ve been on the platform for a long time this archive is likely to be quite hefty in file size. This blog I have had for 5 years with 22k posts, and the export from tumblr came to be 48GB. My previous blog I made in 2011 and has 95k posts, so needless to say I did not use tumblr’s built in export to back that one up.
If you want more control over exactly what you back up from your blog, I recommend that you use tumblr-utils instead. It allows you to backup specific tags, post types, and to ignore posts that you did not create (reblogs where you’ve added a comment count as a post you created, to be clear).
extract the tumblr-utils zip and open the tumblr_backup.py file in notepad
search for “API” and paste in your OAuth consumer key
then go back to the folder where you extracted tumblr-utils and choose open folder in terminal / command prompt, or type cmd.exe in the address bar while inside the folder
now in the window that opens it should show the current path, and you can type “py -2 .\tumblr_backup.py [your options] [your blog name]” and hit enter. Example:
Backing up just my original posts from this blog with this command came to 632MB rather than 48GB, and also gave me the option to save my posts in JSON format which will be useful for converting my posts to a new format for self hosting.
On that note I’m currently looking into figuring out a simple (and ideally free) way of self hosting a static site blog that utilises activitypub, and also converting my old posts to re-host on said blog.
if you dont have an account on any of these I’ll also be sharing an update via my personal site’s RSS feed, link of which includes an explanation of what RSS is and some feed readers you can use, I highly recommend checking it out as getting a feed reader is going to be the best way you can stay connected with people if they scatter across the internet!
tldr: download tumblr-utils to backup your blog more efficiently, introduce yourself to RSS and get a feed reader to stay connected with people, consider saving mine so you can find out how to self host your blog later if tumblr goes down
I see another ‘tumblr is laying off all the staff the end is near’ post again, and while I do see that the tech article about the automatic staff layoffs makes it slightly more likely (though that article doesn’t specify what amount was cut from Tumblr at all) am I supposed to forget the last time you guys were circulating this and freaked me the fuck out? I’m not as eager to believe random blogs and jump on the panic train again.
the problem is the best backup would be wordpress and they are also owned by the same company that laid off sixteen percent of their staff so.
Are there any other web backups people have heard of? I’ve tried dowloading it into a hard drive using various programs but it takes so long the connection always breaks or it doesn’t work. and I have no idea how big this file size would be, twelve-ish years of nonsense…
it’ll be expensive to host it but I have some random stuff I can cut, theres so much writing here I need to save, and I can figure out what to do with it in the meantime…
I think it’s worth, like, being wary, exchanging contact info with people you don’t want to lose track of, backing up your blog* and otherwise not panicking.
Like– I’m not expecting this site to keep beating the odds forever, right, at some point probably we’re gonna run out of false alarms and it’ll actually be the end, and that may or may not be this time (I truly couldn’t say! I hear conflicting things, and I just don’t know enough to sort the signal from the noise).
I think in my mind the real risk is that even if this isn’t The Big One, it seems totally possible that someday the site might just go down with barely any warning, so whenever there’s a scare like this one I take it as a handy reminder to do all those insurance steps, and to consciously appreciate how much I really do value this place.
*fwiw I’ve heard https://github.com/TumblThreeApp/TumblThree is a useful backup tool? I haven’t tried it yet and am really not sure I’m tech savvy enough to use it anyway but maybe it has some workaround for the breaking connection? I know I’ve seen others on github too but they might be outdated idk. fwiw my native tumblr blog backup is something like 40gb if that’s a useful frame of reference (been pretty active since like…… gosh like 2012???? wow)
I have tried Tumblthree but couldn’t get it to work.
Even doing the download from Tumblr does not work because it takes so long, something will eventually break the connection and it’ll fail, I have over 80,000 posts on this thing, I’ve been active since 2010-ish. The frame of reference is useful, thank you! I figured it would be at least that amount.
I think at this point I’m going to have to import to Wordpress, and then back that up. It’ll cost some money but there’s too much here I don’t want to lose.
:
this historian on tiktok is playing music found in holocaust archives that was composed by people imprisoned in concentration camps and it’s as moving as you might imagine
I feel like there’s a certain type of “ex-evangelical” progressive who obviously supports mandatory progressive causes like abortion access and LGBT rights, but then in practice supports them “so strongly” that they can’t compromise on anything. And if that means that they can’t vote for candidates who support those issues because they aren’t “good enough” and those issues get set back, well… That’s a trade-off they’re willing to make!
If there’s one pro-choice candidate and one anti-choice candidate and you campaign against the pro-choice candidate because you don’t think their support is strong enough, knowing that the alternative is the anti-choice candidate… I feel like you’re not that pro-choice?
Or if you have one candidate who wants to maintain LGBT rights and one who wants to roll them back, and you oppose the pro-LGBT candidate because they don’t want to… add 3 new sex markers to government IDs, but the other candidate wants to make it impossible to change the sex marker on your government ID at all… I don’t think you’re actually being very supportive of LGBT rights?
People are addicted to trying to find a way out of the trolley problem. Sometimes you do indeed have to decide whether or not to pull the lever and yes, sometimes somebody is going to die because of your choice. Voting is harm reduction
I feel like in the rush of “throw out etiquette who cares what fork you use or who gets introduced first” we actually lost a lot of social scripts that the younger generations are floundering without.
A lot of tough situations where we now feel like we “don’t know what to do or say” had social scripts just a couple of generations ago and they might have been canned phrases or robotic actions but they could still be meant sincerely and unfortunately we haven’t replaced them with any more sincere or easier new script.
a lot of people are giving examples in the notes of things they just find annoying like not using headphones in public, but OP is talking about actual literal scripts of things to say in awkward situations
if you have a date or two with someone and you don’t see a relationship developing? most millennials / gen Zers just end up ghosting. but a social script that might have been taught and rehearsed in the past could be:
“I really appreciated getting dinner with you the other night and I enjoyed your company, but I’m afraid I didn’t feel a spark. I wish you the best, and hope you find that special someone!”
like it sounds kind of trite but it was at least something to say and it can still be meant with kind sincerity. it also communicates in 2 sentences that you don’t want to see them romantically again, but there aren’t any hard feelings about that. that’s it!!! that’s all it takes!!!
Another example is that at parties a lot of people talk about how awkward it is to mingle or talk to people they dont know. But at old timey parties that was traditionally the HOST’S job, and there was a specific scripted way of doing it that eased the process! The host would bring you in, introduce you and maybe even a little bit about you like what you did for a living, and then guide you to a group you could talk to. They didn’t just let you in the door and then ditch you to fend for yourself in a sea of strangers. That would be unthinkable and no one would be surprised if a get-together like that wound up being awkward.
I still do the party-host thing and yall can, too! (Thanks Mad Men for teaching me a lot of outmoded social scripts… no really tho)
Remember things about your friends! Ask people about their weekends, hobbies, holidays, studies, and jobs! Listen for the concerns people have and what they are working on! Draw connections between one person and another to get the ball rolling. “Oh, Maura, you just got your first cat! You should talk to Felix, he used to work at a rescue. Felix, please tell Maura all the new-cat-guardian pointers.”
“Bill, Sheila, Xan, this is my friend Kale. Kale is really into Star Trek, Bill you and them should talk about it!”
Orrr whatever! After you make the introduction and draw the connection you just float on into the next interaction with someone else at the function. Just listen, care about your friends, get our of your own head, and think of how you can bring other people together and you will feel 100% less awkward.
hi i am so excited about this post because i have posted this exact thing MANY times on here, often in the specific context of how formal etiquette is so useful for autistic people especially, but also for everyone. even if you come off a little bit formal, which you will sometimes, having Old School Manners (or just knowing what they are) for various common scenarios is like having a magic ticket that will just sail you through all kinds of social iinteractions, gatekeeping, social weirdness, and as is pointed out in the above posts about introducing people to each other, can make you into a really valuable and helpful person for an entire gathering or group of people.
i also want to point out that knowing what the polite thing to do in all situations makes you a lot more effective at being rude and obnoxious when the situation calls for it, which is also a valuable and necessary adult skill
When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.
There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.
But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.
You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.
It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”
Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.
Still call it out and question it ….
Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change.
The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.
If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.
We can’t change the world if we decide people can’t change.
Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.
We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.
I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.
In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.
perisex people who know next to nothing about us making “intersex educational” content:
“intersex is a medical condition ……… it’s a medical condition ……. they have a medical condition …. medical condition ……. not all intersex people are LGBTQIA because it’s a medical condition ………. it’s a medical condition”
Just to break this down for any confused people:
Yes, a lot of intersex people have unique medical issues and challenges that perisex people do not have.
No, “intersex” is not a medical condition. Intersex is a sociopolitical identity based on the collective experiences of many, many types of people with differing medical needs and challenges.
Yes, being intersex makes you queer. You can opt out of calling yourself queer, but queer is a sociopolitical identity heavy with specific meaning that will always apply to intersex people, whether an individual identifies themselves as queer or not.
I come from a culture that has no nudity taboo - nudity is not considered inherently sexual, or somehow traumatising to witness. What that means in practice is that there is a clearly drawn line between sexual and non-sexual nudity. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a sexual context, and nothing wrong or inappropriate about nudity in a non-sexual context. However, it is 100% inappropriate to be nude in a situation where it is not obvious from context whether this is sexual or not.
I’ve seen random kids who briefly escaped from their parents bolt across a public park buck-ass naked after they were playing in the water fountain and their parents were in the middle of changing their kid from wet clothes to dry clothes when the small nudist escaped. Changing your small kid’s clothes right there in public is ok because there is obviously nothing sexual about a child whose clothes got wet. But although people will have baby pictures of their kids in the bath or just running around the house like that because sometimes little apes hate clothes for some reason, it’s considered common sense to not share those pictures on facebook mom groups and such, because you have no way of knowing who’s seeing them, and that blurs the line of context.
It all boils down to the clearly defined context. Bathing nude in the same sauna with five of your co-workers at the office christmas party? Clearly nonsexual, therefore completely fine. Your friend-with-benefits inviting you to come over and opening the door in nothing but a doggy collar and the most porn-scented perfume? Clearly sexual, therefore completely fine. A woman checking her breasts for lumps in the gym lockers just before or after a shower? Clearly non-sexual, therefore completely fine.
But if you went to the bank today and there’s some guy who walks in and immediately strips naked, doing his banking business wearing nothing but a deep smile and being clearly very content with this situation, you have no way of telling whether he’s getting kicks out of this or not. There is no contextual reason for him to be nude. Therefore, that is inappropriate.
Then you go home and post on tumblr - as one does - going like “there was some dude completely fucking buck-ass naked in the bank today. That was fucking weird and I wish he had not done that.” And someone immediately swoops into inform you that actually nudity is not inherently sexual or inappropriate, and there are cultures out there that have no nudity taboo. It’s not fair to call somebody a freak for something like that, maybe that guy was just finnish.
