The worst part of exploring the galaxy and interacting with aliens from other planets… is realizing that every people named their planet ‘earth’.

—

They were in the air, soaring high above the alien buildings.

“Let’s get down to Adislk,” they suggested, their translator interpreting to English.

I turned to look at them in confusion. “I thought this was Adis…lik.” I still had trouble figuring out how to pronounce the planet’s name.

They flinched in a way I was beginning to learn meant confusion rather than fear.

“Yes…” they responded. “I mean the surface. Not the name of the planet.”

“Wait. Adis-lelk means 'ground’?”

“No…? Terrih is your planet, this is Adislk?” They flinched two more times.

—

Any mention of ground or dirt was not translated to another language. It was instead changed to a direct recording of 'Earth’, as said by the first of a planet’s people to input information to the Universal Translator Database.

But it was the thought of 'Earth’ no longer being unique that was disheartening. The name was meaningless. One of millions, if not billions, of planets with the exact same name. The only difference was the pronunciation.

Mini memoir time.

So, back in college, right before graduation, I’m talking to my dad in a lobby area, when a man walks up to us with this kind smile and lighthearted tone of voice. He introduces himself as, let’s call him, Mr. Ig Nite, and says my dad and him go way back; they’re buddies.

However, I know that name.

Anonymous asked:

wait wait, what’s the change tumblr did to the reblog chains ? 🥲🥲🥲 I’m so lost

kimdokjas answered:

okay so basically, let’s say you see a post on your dash

before the update, if you clicked on a url, you could do 3 things:

1. view that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A)
2. view the previous reblog on the blog A reblogged it from (B)
3. view the original post on op’s blog ©

however, staff recently implemented an update where clicking on a url no longer takes you to that specific post. now, clicking on a url just takes you to the blog itself.

this means that you now get 5 things:

1. view ONLY that specific reblog on the blog you follow (A) -> changed location near header. also, you will now ONLY see that post and nothing else
2. view ONLY the original post on op’s blog © -> changed location near header. you will only see that post and nothing else. and ONLY if the op hasn’t deleted it, otherwise it just shows an error
3. view the blog of the person you follow (D)
4. view the blog of the person D reblogged it from (F) -> option B no longer exists
5. view the blog of the op (E)

you might be thinking: “cool! i get more options so that’s good, right?” well, no.

there are SEVERAL things wrong with this and it goes beyond the prev tags issue

1) first of all, it’s counterintuitive that A and C changed locations to the area near the header, especially if your userbase was already used to the previous functions. it just seems like horrible UX design to me but let’s put that aside for now.

2) as you can see, option B which allowed you to see the previous reblog of a post no longer exists.

now, if you click on the previous url, you will just be taken to their entire blog. you can no longer view the post itself.

someone asked staff about this, and they replied in this post that the change was INTENTIONAL and if you want to view the previous reblog you would have to “go through the notes view”.

to borrow what someone else said:

basically, this update just killed the prev tags culture in one fell swoop.

(sure, you can still use it to reply directly to the person you’re reblogging from, but it’s now literally useless to use “prev tags” for everyone else involved. sure, you can choose to copy tags or peer review them, but again, if people will have to copy them then the less people are likely to use them, and not every prev lends itself to peer-reviewing imo)

now, listen. i know not everyone likes the prev tags culture, but it just seems like such a poorly-thought decision to kill a culture that like… half of your entire userbase uses (see this poll as a quick reference) and that’s UNIQUE to your site and sets you apart from other social media.

but it’s also not even just prev tags. let’s say you want to remove an annoying addition on a post’s reblog chain? you can no longer do that.

however, i feel like this is the most important point:

regardless of how you may feel about the prev tags culture, the pure UI aspect of it should remain

what i mean by this is: even if you don’t like prev tags, simply 1) being able to access the reblog chain, and 2) clicking on a post and actually have it take you to their BLOG (and not just a page with that one single post) is literally essential navigation.

this update threatens to drive down user engagement (which is already critically low) by making it harder to navigate. which is actually another point:

3) even if you click on A and C now to view those specific posts, it’s NOT the same as it used to be.

before, you could view the reblog directly on the blog. so you could just scroll down and see the other posts leading up to it. now, you will be taken to a page where you will ONLY see that post and nothing else.

but also, you can no longer easily navigate other people’s blogs.

you know how sometimes you would see like 50 notifications of someone going through an entire tag on your blog? that’s going to happen a lot less, i’m afraid.

let’s suppose you want to go to op’s blog because they’re an artist and you want to see more of their art. so you click on C and see that the tag they use for posts with their art is “#my art”

cool! before, you could just click on that tag and immediately view ALL of their art as long as the posts have that tag.

but now, if you click on that tag, it will take you to the ENTIRE tumblr tag with literally all the posts that everyone in the history of time has tagged with that specific tag.

now, to do the same thing that just took 2 clicks before, you would have to: click on C to view the post -> look for the tag you want to navigate -> click E to view their whole blog -> scroll and look for a post that just so happens to have that tag (the search function is literally useless) and hope to god that there’s a recent one or you’ll have to scroll for ages or simply give up -> if you happen to find it, click on that tag to navigate their posts.

you see how this is counterproductive, right? you see how this can literally drive down engagement with content creators, right?

if you make people’s blogs harder to navigate, you will literally drive down the number of likes and reblogs on their posts, which have already been steadily declining for years now.

4) options D and E to view the blogs and not the posts are literally useless because you could already access other people’s blogs before. you just had to click on their url to view their blogs starting from that specific post AND you could choose to just refresh it to view their newest posts.

either way, the change just seems completely unnecessary. and again, it’s not just about the prev tags culture but about basic UI.

so what can we do about it?

i normally don’t advocate for flooding staff with messages but i do feel like this is one of the worst updates staff has ever done (and that’s saying something) and something needs to change.

even if they don’t retcon the entire update, that’s fine, but staff could at least add the option to view the reblog chain as a different feature (maybe even opt-in) for example. there are better ways to go about this than just axing an entire existing feature.

also, this same issue that makes it harder to navigate blogs needs to change. i feel like content creators will be especially affected by this unless this changes because you can no longer easily navigate their tags, so it will inevitably drive down engagement.

so please, contact staff and let them know we want a change.

you can contact support here!

here’s a template for a possible message you could send, but feel free to edit it. (under category you can choose “Feedback”)

Hi, I would like to politely request a change to the recent update that affects the reblog chain of posts. Regardless of the “prev tags” culture itself, the UI aspect of being able to view the reblog chain of a post is essential for navigation on this website. Even adding it as a separate, opt-in feature would be a huge help. Additionally, clicking on a post and then on one of the tags now takes you to the entire tumblr tag instead of the tag on that blog, which makes it harder to navigate blogs. Both of these issues have the potential to drive down user engagement by actively making it harder to navigate Tumblr, but especially for content creators. I hope you can do something to address these issues as soon as possible. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.

also, if you can and/or want, reblogs are appreciated to help spread the word!

that’s pretty much the gist of the issue from what i’ve seen, but if anyone else has anything to add or a different way we could contact staff to make ourselves heard, please feel free to let me know!

TLDR: it’s not just about prev tags, this update affects basic functionality and content creators as well

[moiracolleenodell]

@staff​

Every so often, I think about random things that have happened in my life. And just… daydream about telling about it like I have an audience. …I’ve been in that kind of mood for the past week or so.

I was just now thinking about this one guy…

Would you like to hear a little story?

Yes

No

Depends (on what?)

See Results

[macleod]

Color has been disappearing from the world.

A new research group used machine learning to track color changes in common materials and items, below is their findings for all color changes over time, they used 7000+ items from the 1800s to now to determine color changes in the most common items.

Below are the colors of cars by year, notice how the majority of cars are grey, white, or black compared to twenty years ago.

These aren't data points, but they are comparisons between the 'modern' homes of the 70s and 80s compared to the modern homes of today.

Carpets have equally had the same treatment of grey added to them! The most common color of carpet is now grey or beige.

Even locations that used to scream with color for decades have now modernized to becoming boring minimalist (and I love minimalism) personality-less locations.

The world is becoming colorless, why?

source paper

[sioltach]

you can look at any folk culture around the world, past or present, and find the use of the entire color spectrum. humans are drawn to color, it holds emotional symbolism but it also reflects the land we live off of. I consider it like a celebration of life and our place in it

the problem is that we aren’t actually allowed to belong to the places we live. houses and entire towns are shells meant to be as plain as possible for the next renter, buyer, or investor. the more generic it is, the more consumers it can be sold to. And when you have a country that’s biggest population doesn’t have a distinct sense of cultural identity it will be reflected and mass produced without much complaint

people getting joy from the minimalist gray aesthetic is not the same as the estrangement this country is making between people and place, one of the most fundamental relationships humans need to survive (and be happy while doing it)

[czortofbaldmountain]

Films depict middle ages as devoid of color but it's the other way around.

[rosalarian]

When I was buying my house, people were telling me not to paint it this or that color because it would be harder to sell later. Like, I haven't even bough the house and you're already telling me to sell it! I'm buying a house because I need a place to live! I want to live here until I die or manage to move to Europe! We are not supposed to actually own anything anymore. Not our houses or cars or furniture. We are supposed to be perpetually replacing these things, paying more each time around, until we break and die and our bones are the color of the walls around us.

[thatsarose]

listen I get this but… the pink in one room green blue in the other room carpets were not it. Like they aged badly

[kintatsujo]

Oh come on you don't like naming rooms by carpet color?

[scrubbythebubble]

are american biscuits and scones the same thing?

no, they're different

yes, they're the same

settling a debate, reblog for reach

[penrosesun]

Here’s the necessary clarification for non-USAmericans who are confused by how confidently USAmericans are claiming these are not the same thing: American biscuits are almost identical to British scones. But not American scones. Behold the continuum:

American biscuits:

These are layered quick breads. They are almost always baked in a round shape, and when they're not, they're baked square; you will pretty much never see a triangular American biscuit. They’re usually made with buttermilk, which gives them a nice slightly tangy flavor. They’re not at all sweet on their own, but they’re also not particularly savory, and as a result, they’re a bit of a blank slate: they pair well with butter and jam, but alternatively, they pair equally well with a savory sausage gravy. There are recipes that are firmly on the savory side by virtue of adding cheddar cheese to the dough, but in those cases, people will usually specify “cheese biscuits” or “cheddar biscuits”. American biscuits can be a breakfast food, or a lunch food, or a dinner food, all about equally.

British scones:

These are very similar to American biscuits, but a little bit lighter, and noticeably sweeter. You can have these with butter and jam (or, more likely, clotted cream and jam), but unlike American biscuits, I’d never dream of serving them with anything savory like a sausage gravy. You will sometimes see bits of dried fruit, like currants or dried blueberries, baked into them, but this isn't all that common, and it's basically the extent of weird baked-in flavorings. You will sometimes see these baked into a triangle shape, but more commonly, they are round. They’re great as a breakfast food, but they’re better with an afternoon tea; you’d probably never see them as the accompaniment to a hearty, savory dinner.

American scones:

American scones are denser, sweeter, and significantly more buttery than British scones, without the more clearly defined layers that British scones have. They are almost always baked in a triangle shape, and only very rarely baked round. American scones come in a variety of flavorings – it's not uncommon to find pumpkin spice scones, double chocolate scones, lemon strawberry scones, blueberry scones with fresh blueberries baked right in, etc. It's also not uncommon to find them glazed, like a doughnut (but usually slightly less so). You do not typically top these with butter or jam, or indeed, with anything – they are eaten as-is, as an accompaniment to coffee or tea. They are mostly a breakfast food, though they may occasional feature at an afternoon tea, if someone even has one of those, which in the States, people mostly don't.

American cookies:

American cookies are exclusively a sweet dessert. They are often baked soft, and best eaten warm, although they're perfectly fine to eat cooled, and you can certainly find shelf-stable cookies in stores (which are usually hard, rather than soft, see eg. Chips Ahoy). Oatmeal raisin cookies come the closest to the place that American scones leave off, and it isn't very close. All sorts of flavorings and mixed in bits are common, although chocolate and nuts are more popular mix-in additions than dried fruit. Glazes are fairly uncommon, but not unheard of. The archetypal accompaniment for American cookies is a glass of milk, although they're perfectly nice to enjoy with tea or coffee. They are not, however, a breakfast food. Americans do consider shortbread and gingerbread to both be types of cookies, but if you refer to "cookies" in the abstract, those aren't what people typically think of.

British biscuits:

British biscuits are like American cookies, but pretty much always hard and served at room temperature. I've even heard the opinion that a British biscuit should always be "crisp", with softness as a sign that a biscuit isn't fresh. Americans are familiar with this style of treat, and generally think of British biscuits as "the type of cookies that you get in a tin" – they're very much a thing in America, but they're considered a smaller and much less popular subset of the broader "cookie" category. Like American cookies, these are often eaten as a dessert, but they are much more commonly seen as an accompaniment to tea than the American cookie is.

Tl;dr: This is like an even more complicated version of the crisps/chips/fries thing, I’m afraid. We're simply talking about different things.

[asjjohnson]

the layout of my dashboard just changed D: I want it back!

...I'd been seeing posts about a change, but I guess I was hoping I'd somehow avoided it?

[asjjohnson]

wait.

my activity thing is no longer visible.

Why did they change the desktop site to be like the less-functional mobile site?

(edit: oh wait, I found the activity thing. …but it’s still like I’m looking in a funhouse mirror, where everything’s backwards and disorienting)

the layout of my dashboard just changed D: I want it back!

…I’d been seeing posts about a change, but I guess I was hoping I’d somehow avoided it?

[thebibliosphere]

ALT

When I say editing software is getting dumber, this is what I mean.

In what world is "What dinnered?" more legible than "What happened to dinner?" I just... what?!

[albatris]

if your petrol station cashier had bright blood red eyes would you comment on it

yes

no

depends (on?)

See Results

bonus points if you tell me what you would say

[mecharose]