greyphitus - Tumblr blog

greyphitus · 14 days

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honestly, no one has suffered more than entomologists though

they’ll be like “here’s a cool insect i have spent my life learning about, researching, debating and advocating for! isn’t it cool?” and someone will be like well actually i think we should kill every last one with fire

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greyphitus · 17 days

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"i dont understand the point of bedbugs and fleas, like theyre just parasites, taking resources. they cause diseases, theyre itchy or painful, what is the point, why shouldnt they go extinct?"

Quickly, how do you feel about unemployed disabled people

#stuff doesnt need a reason to exist #things just are #but if u try to explain that to people it gets them really mad #like really mad #idk why but it makes some people just soooo mad

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greyphitus · 24 days

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intersex animals r not nonbinary animals they r intersex animals hhow many times do wwe have to do rhis

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greyphitus · 25 days

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ah, tfw u get reblogged by big blog. have never seen the notes shoot up like that. guess tumblr really does like that bee

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greyphitus · 25 days

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Tumblr was liking that post about the sexually dimorphic carpenter bee the other day so I figure yall might like this bilateral gynandromorph (half male half female) Xylocopa sp. found by alarond on Reddit.

#bees #carpenter bee #valley carpenter bee #bilateral gynandromorph #sexual dimorphism #dimorphism #bugblr #reddit

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greyphitus · 2 months

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Javi what do you think of the @/staff post by trans & queer staff? I read it as a blatant condemnation of their boss's misconduct but a lot of people in the notes are going against it and idk if i missed something in the corporate speak

Are you kidding me???? I would be very surprised if no one gets fired over that. They are fucking heros.

#tumblr #tumblr staff #automattic

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greyphitus · 2 months

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A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally.

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr.

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

#tumblr #tumblr staff #automattic

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greyphitus · 2 months

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I think we should go easier on Tumblr staff, they don't seem to be on board with the Matt nonsense. cyle just reblogged foone's "Tumblr pride flag" post that included a line about "being banned from Tumblr because you're a trans woman", jv leaked/confirmed a bunch of info about the Midjourney deal, and zingring came back from sabbatical to confirm the information about the moderator who was taking bribes to ban trans women last year. not to mention the efforts of the ex employees, especially tinystepsforward and sreegs.

#so torn on this #dont want to support the ceo #but do want to support the staff #nothing to do but wait and see what happens at this point #tumblr #not photos

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greyphitus · 2 months

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What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?

An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.

#might be deleting my stuff soon

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greyphitus · 3 months

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January Follower Count Donation

A little off-beat, but this month I'm donating $167 to Microbe.TV. If you like learning about viruses, bacteria, parasites, evolution, immunology and neuroscience, you should check them out. Note: their audience is primarily academics and medical professionals, so podcasts may not be easily digestible for entry-level listeners.

Also donating my recurring $30 to iNaturalist, for a total of $197 for 197 followers. Thanks all for following!

#greyphitus #donations #microbe.tv #microbe tv

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greyphitus · 3 months

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NOTE TO SELF-SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!

#not photos #in light of some recent posts circulating my tumblrspheres...

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greyphitus · 3 months

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networking is very easy. there are two main methods of networking, one for online, and one for in person. for online networking, you need to post a metric fuckton of observations on inaturalist. for in person, find a cool bug or plant and point at it really enthusiastically.

#not photos #networking

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greyphitus · 3 months

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