This article is actually about a very serious problem. If you overgenerate electricity it increases the phase frequency of the power grid, and if that goes out of sync with your generators (including solar panels) it can destroy them. In the kind of way where your power grid is fucked for months. It is very very very very bad.

California started a program to make solar panels more affordable by offering very low interest rates for solar panels, to allow people to benefit from their lifetime $/energy cost that's below fossil fuels, without having to worry about the high frontloaded cost. However they did not do this for batteries. And power grid quality batteries with massive energy storage and serious charge-discharge lifetimes, are expensive.

And they did this because while solar panels are cheaper than fossil fuels per kilowatt hour of electricity over their lifetime, solar panels plus batteries are not. And California wanted a supplemented free market solution and didn't really want to think about the part that direct government intervention in the form of taxation and paying for this change would be necessary.

So everyone in California just kept adding solar panels to the grid with no disconnect mechanisms, until eventually it hit a point where at noon, solar panels generated more power than the entire grid needed. With no batteries to store the excess. This is a motherfucking power grid killer. It is a scenario where people get left in the fucking dark for months because of how badly it destroys the powergrid.

So the power grid authorities did the only thing they could do. They called up every industrial plant with heavy duty equipment and ovens they could and paid them to turn it on full blast (because using that equipment costs money in wear and tear even without the electricity cost). And in doing so, avoided disaster.

That's what this article is talking about. They are solar panel researchers criticizing a capitalist adoption strategy and promoting direct government intervention to create renewable energy. However as with most newspapers they don't get to choose the title, the editor picks the most provocative title that will get clicks.

THE NDP FORCED A CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE

Trans women are intentionally misgendered, threatened and called pedophiles, and are the targets of callout/vague posts every single week in here. It's not "just staff and terfs"

Since February 19th: Tumblr's CEO, photomatt, made a statement about predstrogen's (unfair) termination, misgendering her and threatening to call the FBI on her (archived screenshots). Then, on February 20th: he continued to harass Rita on Twitter

Following this, multiple other trans women were terminated due to their criticism of staff's and photomatt's handling of this situation, like: milf-adjacent, catgirldick, nebulaaaaaa, jammerjenny, yaoivriskaforever, 8millionsystem, trans-kitty-meow, mozzarella-firefox, rulerofpurple, gay-satan-3, catgirlpunishedshaft

On February 21st: dykemacabre accused Kara (a member of Cohost's staff) of being a pedophillic furry and a lolicon, blaming her for allowing "cub porn" on the platform, which was a lie; the site doesn't allow that, and the post was quickly proven to be intentionally misleading. After being caught, dykemacabre apologized for part of the post, but doubled down, later deactivating

On February 27th: ardourie (formerly known as neotrances, well-known transmisogynist) began harassing enemy-viv over a post about Aaron Bushnell's online identity (like his username and use of pronouns on YouTube/Reddit/Discord,) which lead to people accusing Viv of "transvestigating" Aaron's online presence (while misusing that word) and spreading lies about Viv. She deactivated due to the harassment and has stated that she won't come back

On March 8th: roadhogsbigbelly (who accused txttletale [January 10th] and Gretchen Felker-Martin [February 1st] of being pedophiles) doubled down several times while arguing with different people about "not misgendering" a trans girl (after vagueing her), while misgendering her multiple times

This happens every week

Almost every single week there is a new callout, a new harassment campaign, new anons spreading rumours/misinformation, and more people comfortably vagueing and misgendering trans women

It's not just staff and terfs

if you're scrolling by because these are like, people you dislike or whatever, have you considered examining why that stands between you and pushing against transmisogyny? Examining why exactly you feel that dislike toward these trans women?

As someone whose been on this website 10+ years I’ve seen more trans women banned recently than I’ve ever seen Neo nazis on this website banned or TERFs

genuinely insane how often trans women get banned vs terfs n nazis like. i will see a reply from a neo-nazi on a post and they'll more often than not still be there by the next time i see it while like half of the trans women i see on posts are fuckin Poofed

yall remember how the best anti fashist action that ever happend on this site was when out of nowhere suddenly tonnes of fash blogs were being taken over by Woody from Toy Story, how some annonmous person or group just decided one day to do something about it and started taking them out, fuckin Woody's Roundup was more effective than staff has ever been

Tumblr's reply to the situation with CEO's transphobia is pathetic and you should not be thanking them for doing the bare minimum of saying he's not speaking for them. They fucking thanked that bitch.

The affected trans women are still banned.

A transphobic manchild offered no proper apology. Or stopped. He is also still in his position.

Tumblr is still factually transphobic. Keep pushing.

Yet another deleted blog, fantastic

They know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing when they see their users speaking out and nuke them. There is no error or compromise here, this is active malice on staff’s part and they will continue to treat black and trans bloggers like dirt if you just let them.

To anyone who still had any doubt: here you go. Nothing has changed and tumblr staff is still censoring any criticisms, still hasn’t reversed any of the ridiculous bans, still hasn’t added any kind of new tools for dealing with harassment.

Staff lied about almost every promise on their “apology” post. Nothing has changed and at this point I don’t think anything will change unless we keep making a fuss about it.

Don’t ever stop talking about this. Blow it up every fucking time it happens.

The history of corporate propaganda.

I vividly remember attending a training session with a scan from an 1880-something newspaper that said "unions used to be something we needed, but we're past that now." The corporate propaganda hasn't changed in 130+ years.

This is stunning.

The whole piece is quite long, please go read it yourself, it's quite definitive.

(BAD) UPDATE ON KOSA !

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act

This may seem grim but we Can still stop this bill if we focus on contacting senators /the House and keep spreading the word.

PLEASE REBLOG !

Join our Discord server to organize against it :

https://discord.gg/pwTSXZMxnH

TAKE ACTION HERE

https://www.badinternetbills.com/

MORE INFO HERE

https://www.tumblr.com/taikeero-lecoredier/709890130733826048/these-twos-bills-are-very-bad-for-the-future-of

SPREAD THE WORD !

Out of Touch

Yes

it’s Out Of Touch Leap Day! you won’t be able to celebrate this until 2052 so celebrate while you can

From instructions on how to opt out, look at the official staff post on the topic. It also gives more information on Tumblr's new policies. If you are opting out, remember to opt out each separate blog individually.

Please reblog this post, so it will get more votes!

And again, please reblog this post!

So far: 34 votes, only 5 reblogs.

The opt out toggle literally is not available on my app, and we're seriously getting to the last straws with this website

I regret to inform you that I'm fixated on the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience. The AI-generated script generated a villain called The Unknown that's loosely meant to be an evil chocolatier that lives in the walls and was supposed to have been defeated by getting sucked into a vacuum, but because the creators of this Experience had about eleven pounds to work with they told the actor to improvise this. I'm obsessed

Here's a video from the actor who played Wonka talking about the experience

Interview on The Independent

I'm Obsessed. Obsessed

Link to a Twitter thread diving into the script and some pics from the event, including the above mentioned lemonade table

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

everyone go enable this immediately

you need to go to your blog -> your blog’s settings. then scroll down to the visibility section. on the app it’s just labeled “visibility.” (it can be a bit confusing because it’s not under “general settings” or “privacy settings”—you have to specifically go to “blog settings.”)

you have to do this individually for each separate side-blog. i can not believe staff didn’t inform us about this before implementing it

And about the AI opt-out setting Tumblr will deploy tomorrow, I’ll just let you with the words of the person in charge of the heist:

So Tumblr will notify openAi and Midjourney that you wish your posts to not be used and it’s entirely up to them to comply or not. And as we know, we are talking about some of the less ethical companies on the internet (which honestly is kind of a feat), so that cute little setting will most than probably do nothing and less.

Not to mention that if it works the same as the search opt-out, the moment you are reblogged by someone who hasn’t opted out… Bam! You are in chatGPT, baebeeee!

“We’re selling your Tumblr posts and art to AI services for scraping, you’re opted in by default, and even if you opt out, the only thing ensuring they won’t take it is a conversation worth less than a pinky-promise”

guys I think the website is dead to me

They had a chance last year, they really did. If they had focused on moderation, trimmed excess features, improved site functionality when people came flooding in from Twitter. They could have made this the de-facto site for artists, writers, all of it.

And yet they haven’t just fumbled it, they haven’t just shot themselves in the foot, they’ve taken the whole damn leg, and it took them less than a week to do it.

This company deserves exactly what they’ve earned- every last ounce of scorn they’ve accrued.

Ok well, that fuckin suckss... I was really hoping I'd be able to keep art posting here for a little while longer....

To clear up any confusion, Tumblr just shadowdropped an update that includes an AI datascraping program, and has every blog automatically opted in to it by default. Essentially now, no matter what, folks' art is at risk of getting scooped up for AI training without consent. Which is something I do not want for my art.

So! For the future of this blog! I'm gonna be honest, I'm kinda in a spot where I have to post my art elsewhere now, and all the art already on here will likely end up getting deleted as that's kinda the most I can do.

Does that mean I'll stop using this site altogether? No, not yet, at least. Where will you be able to find my art now? Check me out on cohost and bluesky! I've got the ol' choast linked in my pinned, and I'll do the same for my bluesky soon. I will also be continuing to post art here in the form of links to cohost, though! And since this is still my biggest platform, you'll also get the ol' commission info pages when my queue opens up. Comms are kinda the only way I have money for doing much of anything beyond living.

Anyhow, this ain't goodbye, I'm gonna hold out for now.