deep in my heart of hearts I do think it’s a little funny that everyone on this website has spent the last decade being actively hostile to any attempt tumblr has ever made to turn a profit (e.g. who remembers all of the “let’s tank tumblr’s value even more” jokes after the verizon > automattic sale) but now that tumblr is potentially entering its senescence people are acting legit surprised that its corporate owners aren’t eager to shovel more cash into this money pit. idk why anyone would think the churning gears of capitalism would suddenly come to a halt and make an exception for a microblogging website started by a bunch of hipsters in 2007.
ultimately I do think tumblr suffers from having a userbase that’s almost uniquely impossible to make money off of. I struggle to imagine any way this website could get out of the red considering that its users are generally resistant to ads (and running ads isn’t super lucrative anyway unless you have a huge network and collect facebook/insta levels of audience data/PII, of which tumblr does neither. plus facebook/insta eliminates a lot of middleman fees because they are their own ad platform) and almost no one is gonna cough up money on a service they’ve been using for free for years. and before someone goes “well they should just make this website a public good and/or nationalize it” please go sit in the corner and spend some time coming up with (1) an honest forecast of how likely it is that’ll occur in the next five years and (2) a list of steps that need to happen to get there and a list of resources necessary to keep it running afterwards. and before someone goes “I think tumblr should forget about profitability and keep the lights on indefinitely/focus on making users happy” please tell me what world you inhabit where everything runs on monopoly money and good intentions. I would love to visit someday.
The investor who sought to lease 25 percent of the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem has ignored a letter by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem cancelling the controversial real estate deal and has started demolition, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem warned Monday.
[…] “Yesterday they even brought security guards armed with high powered rifles and tactically trained dogs demanding an evacuation of Armenians from the parking lot. As a reaction to this, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, members of the St. James Brotherhood, and members of the Armenian community, gathered in the Armenian Gardens and peacefully expressed their discontent. After a few hours, the two sides agreed to disperse until the Patriarchate receives an answer to their sent cancellation letter,” the Chancellery added.
[…] Danny Rothman and George Warwar, representatives of Xana Capital, backed with about 15 armed settlers and attack dogs, demanded the expulsion of Armenians, calling it their land. Warwar threatened the community, exclaiming that he’ll “get them one by one.”
a good question for anyone defending israel is why settlers are seizing the land of christian armenians in jerusalem, who have had an unbroken presence in the city since the 4th century, have not fought against israelis, and have no connection to hamas, the PLO, or any other militant groups
the mean hemisphere of my brain is always like it would be really awesome if people understood the basic technical architecture underpinning common internet shit so they could make more useful critiques of said internet shit but the less mean hemisphere of my brain is like okay I’ve been working adjacent to the ads industry for the last five years or so and literally just today I bought a “programmatic for idiot crybabies” book because I still get confused about certain topics. that said I feel like basic familiarity with ad auctions should be common knowledge but maybe I’m just being xkcd-2501 about it
got my “programmatic for idiot crybabies” book in the mail and this is the opening chapter. maybe I need to ease up a little
oh I feel like the biggest idiot on earth right now lol. a while back someone on hacker news (my first mistake) mentioned that magnesium is good for anxiety so I was like “say no more” and picked up a bottle from from target. been taking that nightly for a few weeks even though the pills are huge glistening purple obelisks. meanwhile I have two doses of remicade under my belt and my crohn’s symptoms are for sure improving but are still, you know, so-so. then I just read another comment on hacker news (I know I know!) where someone else mentioned that magnesium citrate specifically is a laxative and I was like wait… hold on now…… checked the medicine cabinet. it is indeed magnesium citrate. fucking groaning over here
