[polyamorousmisanthrope]

June Library

The new month is starting!!!! Are you going to use your public library?

To count, you have to have used the library ONCE in each calendar month.

Borrowing books and physical media count.

Borrowing digital media in all forms counts.

Going to the library to write counts.

Dropping a fiver as a donation to the libray counts.

Sitting in the library to work or hang out counts.

Attending a program/class offered or hosted by the library counts.

Calling the reference desk with a question counts, but ya gotta be kind to the librarians, 'cause librarians rock.

Taking your kid (for whatever value of "your" kid... If you take care of a kid, ya know?) to a program counts.

Being the one to read to the kids counts.

[hylianengineer]

There is one very important thing I need people without major dietary restrictions to understand: the distress caused by allergies, celiac disease, and other food restrictions is largely not about the food.

Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.

I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.

Food is such a basic human need, and a lot of people don't really need to think about it. When your danger foods can be anywhere and everywhere, suddenly your entire life revolves around avoiding them, and it massively sucks. You get used to it and it's not a big deal most of the time, but then you go to a new restaurant, or your office has a potluck, or you've been invited to a party and suddenly it feels just as miserable and exhausting as it ever has.

[apolladay]

What do you prefer your house thermostat set at, in degrees Celcius?

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

What do you prefer your house thermostat set at, in degrees Celcius?

64 or lower

65-67

68-69

70-72

73 or higher

No preference

Voting ended onJun 2

[changes]

An update for users in Brazil and the United Kingdom

To continue our commitment to user safety and to comply with local laws, we will start using age groups to determine access to certain experiences.

People in Brazil or in the UK, who are 18 or older, will soon need to verify their age to change content label settings and view mature-labeled content. Until then, the settings will be locked to hide.

As a reminder, verification is handled by our age-assurance partner, k-ID. Tumblr won't have access to the information you submit, just the final age-verification result. Documents are deleted after confirmation, and facial scan data never leaves your device. 

Questions? Contact Tumblr support or learn more about these changes here.

[therovingace]

If you do this, you WILL lose customers/users/ad revenue. I know if this goes through I'm immediately deleting the tumblr app off of all my devices.

k-ID is highly unreliable, and is putting more people at risk of data breaches than the alternative of minors encountering 'mature content' that you heavily police (over-liberally imo, but is policed and removed per Tumblr's terms of service). It is clearly obvious that a service involved in a data breach controversy with another popular social platform (Discord, October 2025)

ID photos of 70,000 users may have been leaked, Discord says

The platform says hackers targeted a firm that helped to verify the ages of its users.

(From here on out I am mainly focusing on UK laws and guidelines, as that is what I am more familiar with.)

The UK's Online Safety Act 'applies to services even if the companies providing them are outside the UK should they have links to the UK. This includes.... (if) it is capable of being accessed by UK users and there is a material risk of significant harm to such users.' (see below).

Per Tumblr's User Guidelines, "Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts (or content with an overt focus on genitalia) are not allowed on Tumblr." ( https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/user-guidelines ) According to its own guidelines, there ought not to be 'a material risk of significant harm to (UK) users' for Tumblr to deem their site applicable to the act.

(It should also be worth noting that a petition against the act on the grounds of freedom of information and speech by over half a million people; more fuel to the argument against the age verification.)

Petition: Repeal the Online Safety Act

We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.

Overall, this change would drive many users off of your platform, while ruining the trust between you and even more. Do not implement it.

[superwholockian444]

Yeah it starts with the u.k and Brazil, and then it’s just dominos. If I have to put my id into an app or website to look at something, I simply won’t use it. As an adult, it’s not my problem that kids are looking at stuff that might not be age appropriate. Thats what parents are for. And it starts with porn, but then they’re banning anything to do with queerness. Because that’s exactly what this is leading to, governments are going to start banning anything that they disagree with and consider immoral. They want as all to be sheep, to not think about what they’re doing, what bills and laws they’re passing, until one day we look up from our cell phones and they’ve took everything.

[rederiswrites]

I've spent a lot of this last year grieving. For the country we thought we were, for the opportunities my children won't get and the things they have to face, for the hurts the fight brings. Frequently, my body is exhausted from it all.

This week has been a terrible week of grief and rage particularly for black Americans. Such a violent reminder of how many people still want them to have no voice. For someone who grew up in an environment where anti-black racism was mostly systemic and passive --a passive absorption of "black on black crime" or "welfare queens", a constant drip of negative stereotypes and propaganda, but with little active animosity--it's always shocking to be reminded that a lot of people still truly hate black people. I see it, but I certainly don't understand it. I've had to do plenty of unlearning, like everybody in our culture, but the real, actual hatred--that is just incredible to see. Horrible.

I don't have a neat conclusion. I wish it could just all stop. I'll keep fighting, and I hope we can turn a corner in our national history soon.

Donate

NAACP depends upon the generosity of supporters to fund our vital work advancing political, educational, social, and economic equality for B

[fjordfolk]

When you meet an unfamiliar dog, do you usually want to pet it?

I'm a dog owner, and I usually want to pet the dog

I'm a dog owner, and I usually don't want to pet the dog

I'm not a dog owner, and I usually want to pet the dog

I'm not a dog owner, and I usually don't want to pet the dog

Voting ended onApr 28

Just assume all other parameters are neutral. It's a friendly enough dog, you're not in a rush, etc.

Note: I am not asking DO YOU pet the dog, do you think it's acceptable, etc. I'm asking do you WANT to pet the dog.

[moonlightonmarigolds]

[moonlightonmarigolds]

[pangur-and-grim]

here's the book-seller article. you have to sign up for a free account to read it, so I'll just give an overview.

The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo: an evil alien brain-slug gets isekaid to a fantasy world where he encounters a spider-centaur. they have graphic sex (and yes, the spider uses his pedipalps). this one will be out in March 2027

Anna Stewart is Not Human: a changeling story that is definitely not a clumsy metaphor for autism. I get to illustrate this one!!! it'll be out October 2027

Obviously, Sir Cameron is Still Alive: the sequel to Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to die. heavy focus on the martians in this one. it'll be out February 2028

[moonlightonmarigolds]

[14mg]

quick what’s ur opinion on tea. everyone who sees this is obligated to answer in some way

[apolladay]

if you work a job where it is not typical to receive tips, and someone offered you a tip, would you accept it?

Yes

No

Tipuance (tip nuance)

Results

Voting ended onMar 31

[geopsych]

I post this every year but it’s worth it to remind myself to plant flowers, in the garden and in my mind and whenever I get a chance, in the hearts of others.

[moonlightonmarigolds]

[moonlightonmarigolds]

[ginalinettiofficial]

so i just went as far back as possible in my ao3 history (and damn yall tbt a time before ao3. what a bleak world that was when we had to either go digging for forums of specific fandoms or use fanfiction dot net my most beloathed!!! we are so blessed. thank you ao3)

and apparently i have read or visited something like 11,600 individual fics since i got on ao3!!! which both feels very big and very small.

i got this number by going to history, scrolling to the bottom, seeing how many pages of history i have, and multiplying that number by twenty (cuz ao3 lists 20 results per page). 580 pages of results = ~11,600 individual fics. (ao3 sorts rereads of the same fic as one result, and also counts deleted fics in results!!!)

which made me so curious:

approximately how many fics have you read/visited on ao3, based on your ao3 history (# of pages of results on your ‘history’ page x 20)???

0 - 100

101 - 500

501 - 1,000

1,001 - 3,000

3,001 - 6,000

6,001 - 10,000

10,001 - 15,000

15,001 - 20,000

20,001 - 25,000

25,001 - 30,000

30,001 +

i do not have an ao3 account :-(

Voting ended onMar 16

[chaos-monkeyy]

(Also psst if you don't have an account, get one. More and more fics are being locked to accounts only because of all the genAI scraping and spambots that comment as guests)

[justagirlinacape]

Just so we’re all clear:

Things that you SHOULD NOT deadname

Trans women

Trans men

Non binary people

Any other trans identity that doesn’t fit into those three

Cis people who changed their name

Anyone who goes by a different name then the one their parents gave them regardless of how “good” of a person they are, or your personal feeling towards them

Things that you SHOULD deadname

Twitter

[owie-qwq]

• Sears Tower

[homunculus-argument]

One of my good friends has been patiently trying to teach her untaught but overconfident husband how to cook normal dishes that an actual human person would eat. Her mother-in-law was proud of the fact that no man who has lived in her household has ever learned to cook or do laundry, but unfortunately her attempts to sabotage her son to be too functionally helpless to ever abandon her ultimately failed.

She's still trying to annoy both of them to death but my friend has plenty of combat experience with putting up with infuriating family of her own, so her mother-in-law is powerless to do anything but screech and whine about how this Evil Woman Stole Her Son. And is Making Him learn to do laundry.

[angrylittlesliceofpizza]

proud of that!?? wtf

[homunculus-argument]

There's still pockets of the world out there where it's still 1950s, evidently.

[justalurkr]

The "too functionally helpless to ever abandon her" certainly explains a lot.

[strigops]

this is extremely local and also a shot in the dark but if literally anyone on this site lives in frederick county, maryland i am begging you to sign the referendum to vote on the expansion of the data center in frederick. they have until march 15th to get 18,000 signatures, after which we can vote to slap that expansion right out of their hands if we're lucky. you will need to sign at one of their in-person signing events, but it will be worth it. unfortunately they've already started construction on the site, but we CAN deny them from destroying another 1000 acres of forest/wetlands, high value farmland, and rural legacy areas.

the data center is being built on the site of an old aluminum plant, and the area surrounding it has already undergone numerous investigations for soil and groundwater contamination containing PCE, arsenic, fluoride, and the cancer-causing compounds PAHs and PCBs. while the linked EPA report seems to conclude that the contaminants on the site are "residual", it is still very much an actual superfund site. and someone decided to plunk a data center on it. the factory closed in 2005 and they were still finding new waste storage areas up until 2014, and construction is going to churn up all of that soil. i don't know enough about how well those contaminants travel as airborne dust, but it WILL get into the groundwater again with extensive disturbance like that. the current owners are now responsible for any remediation and i frankly do not trust fucking meta to keep anything from leaching anywhere. the site is also quite literally on top of tuscarora creek, which is extremely close to and flows directly into the potomac (and considering the current shitwater horizon situation our poor river REALLY does not need any more issues).

as a final kick of irony, the plant the data center will be built on closed because it was using so much electricity that they could no longer afford power. now. does that seem like a great place to build a data center, which are famous for slurping down so much electricity that it raises everyone's electric bills in the entire surrounding area. what was the thought process here. how did this ever get approved. please if you can, sign that referendum to nuke this expansion from orbit.

[curiositysavesthecat]

When you were a child, was your internet access ever limited and/or monitored by your parents (or legal guardians) in any way?

Yes, my internet access was limited and/or monitored

No, my internet access was never limited or monitored in any way

I didn’t have access to internet as a child at all

Voting ended onFeb 25

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).