streetsofdublin:

DART TRAINS COMING AND GOING WHILE THE RUGBY FANS ARREAR TO BE CONFUSED

The Dublin Area Rapid Transit system (stylised as DART) is an electrified commuter rail railway network serving the coastline and city of Dublin, Ireland.

TARA STREET STATION IN DUBLIN ON A BUSY SATURDAY

The station was unusually busy for a Saturday as there was a Rugby Match at Lansdowne. As soon as I arrived there was a special train and that reduced the pressure on the southbound service however because of the crowding I abandoned my plan to visit Greystones and travelled North to Howth instead.

The Dublin Area Rapid Transit system (stylised…

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whit the fuck is this????

this is awful, really really bad

phantomrose96:

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that’s happened gradually, and which I’ve seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I’m not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it’s due to the homogenization of social media sites? There’s a lot more of this divide between “content creator” and “consumer” instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. “Asks” aren’t really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an “ask” on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

oceanlandworld:

oceanlandworld:

very cool that tumblrs “more like this” feature is seemingly using image recognition on my selfies to recommend pictures of people who look like me when i go on my posts

Lol @ the response to my email

So yeah tumblr is absolutely scraping every selfie you post to recommend your face to strangers. Normal website

tumblr had built up so much goodwill with it’s userbase over the last two years and is now just pissing it away

spectra-bear:

qqchurch:

cathkaesque:

pitbolshevik:

Where do Tanks come from? ☭

A very tankie essay in defense of Marxism-Leninism, specifically for “the libertarian left”

Medium

this article transmorgified me from an ancom into an ML im not joking

The argument of this article is basically true and I dont want to derail discussion of it but referring to the Hungarian Revolution as fascist based on the testimony of a Soviet soldier saying essentially “our commanders told us that there was a fascist counterrevolution” and little more is quite a dissatisfying dismissal of, surely, what this whole article is about.

I highly recommend the testimonies from Peter Fryer, who was the Daily Worker (the Communist Party of Great Britain’s newspaper) correspondent for Hungary and Sandor Kopaci, who was a steelworker who joined the antifascist resistance in WW2 and was appointed cheif of Budapest’s police force after the war. Both took the side of the revolution.

Under Rakosi the country’s workforce was put on a piecework wages (I also really recommend A Worker in A Workers’ State on for a first hand account of this system from a Hungarian tractor factory worker). Work was intensified to an extraordinary degree while wages significantly cut. Consumer goods and foodstuffs were underinvested in while concessions were given to Soviet uranium mining and resources wasted on vanity projects.

This was enforced through deployment of the AVH secret police to discipline both the management and workforce of the factories. The AVH themselves were on three to twelve times the wages of the average worker. They were to put it lightly thugs who abused the power that was given to them and tortured people who opposed them. Communists who criticised this approach were jailed and accused of being aligned with Tito’s government.

The revolution was not a fascist coup but fundamentally driven by strike committees that began collectivising the factories and farms they seized control of. It armed itself after the AVH fired on demonstrations. You can read about the operation of one of these committees in a rural area in this chapter of the Fryer book. You can read the declarations of the Budapest Central Workers’ Council, the Hungarian Writers’ Union, and students of the MEFESZ union, key organisations in the revolution. I challenge you to find the fascism in these documents and the operation of these committees. There is a reason that the crushing of this revolution caused mass resignations in communist parties outside the soviet bloc.

I really like the political argument in this piece in terms of thinking of revolution as a war that you have to win. But historically these conditions led to an uprising where workers tour down soviet symbols that had been shoved down their throat in place of bread. They created braindead societies where workers’ initiative, the thing that a society based on planning needs to function, was crushed and party loyalty rewarded, and ultimately allowed the bureaucracy that lead that society to reintroduce capitalism.

luimnigh:

Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56

The Dublin performer found worldwide fame with hit single Nothing Compares 2 U in 1990

The Irish Times

snaxle:

snaxle:

i am not calling twitter fucking x

im deadnaming that shit

wilwheaton:

dduane:

thatsmimi:

auressea:

viridianriver:

KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users’ Mental Health Crises for “Content”

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn’t even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I’m glad I stopped to read, because:

• What you say on there won’t be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn’t even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)

• Also, what you say on there? Is now…
• Koko’s intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including
• Publicly performing or displaying your “content” (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation
• Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them
• Sell / share this “content” with other businesses

• Any harm you come to using Koko? That’s on you.
• And Koko won’t take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)

I was curious about their business model. They’re a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They’re also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn’t find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of “People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find”. Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don’t read if you’re not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

Keep reading

A Mental Health App Tested ChatGPT on Its Users

Koko used GPT-3 to counsel 4,000 people but shut the test down because "it felt kind of sterile." Users rated the AI responses highly. Cue t

Gizmodo

Discord's KokoBot Triggers an Ethics Controversy

An experiment in using chatbots to dispense mental-health counseling raised questions about ethics. Rob Morris, cofounder and CEO of Koko...

Discord's KokoBot Triggers an Ethics Controversy

Kokobot is incredibly predatory and exploitative. I wrote a post about how it exploits minors’ empathy and gamifies “giving mental health advice”, resulting in an unregulated mess that can only do harm to teens’ mental health in the long run.

There are young people on tumblr that actively seek support from KokoBot right now, if you check the tag for recent posts. Those people did not get paid to promote it, so do not harrass them. If you can, direct them towards resources about Kokobot (like this post) that are more transparent about what this company is up to.

This… is DEEPLY DISTURBING.

SIGNAL.
BOOST.

potato-gay:

nepolana:

It’s not even comedically bad or something it’s just plain cruelty now

tyrantisterror:

northwest-cryptid:

bitternest:

bitternest:

chaser:

ALT

Come on Tumblr, don’t be fucking cowards

Alternatively -  come on nameless intern #102, you have a chance to be the fucking funniest person on staff.

cowards

Time for manual blazing, tumblr can be a coward but they can’t stop us.

probablyasocialecologist:

High court quashes rules letting agency workers cover for UK strikers

Unions hail verdict that brands Kwasi Kwarteng’s approach ‘so unfair’ so as to be ‘unlawful and irrational’

the Guardian

Legal changes brought by the government to let agency staff fill in for striking workers have been quashed by the high court, with ministers’ approach to the policy being labelled “irrational”.

A number of unions, including Aslef, the RMT and Unite, joined in legal challenge to “strike-breaking” regulations announced last summer by the government as it faced widespread industrial action across rail and other sectors.

In a verdict delivered on Thursday after a hearing in May, Mr Justice Linden ruled that the approach taken by ministers was “so unfair as to be unlawful and, indeed, irrational”.

Unions argued that the changes to regulations announced by the then business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, undermined the right to strike, and were made unlawfully.

probablyasocialecologist:

violettfae:

deafmangoes:

Yesterday, July 8th, saw a huge march for trans rights in London. Over 25,000 people in attendance, including celebrities and activists.

Our “impartial” media, the BBC, hasn’t mentioned it once across the BBC News website. You’d think 25,000+ gathering in the capital city to protest for equality would be worth even a token one-liner article, but no.

I would say I’m disappointed but at this point it’s expected. I’m angry about it, though.

Thousands march for trans freedom and equality at London’s Trans+ Pride

Thousands of trans people and allies came together in central London to march for trans rights at the capital’s annual Trans+ Pride event.

PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news

oh my god i heard nothing about this what the hell ?!

Not surprised considering the state of the beeb nowadays

BBC reissues guidance advising staff not to attend Pride 'protests'

A BBC employee has told PinkNews the guidance on staff attending Pride events 'fails' LGBTQ+ people and allies who work for the broadcaster.

PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news