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(via Moving to San Francisco - The Bold Italic - San Francisco)
After four years tumblogging as atari, Tumblr is revoking foursquare engineer Pete’s web address; with ostensibly no attempt to suggest Atari Inc. use a custom domain like tumblr.atari.com, blog.atari.com, atariinc.tumblr.com, atari.com/tumblr or atari.com/blog, which are all free and theirs for the taking.
Pete has one week to change his web address before it is changed for him. 45 million tumblogs have been created since Pete chose his username, so hopefully his second choice is available.
I’ve been a Tumblr user for just under 4 years. Personally, it’s one of the best blogging platforms around, having solved the problems associated with services like blogspot or self hosting. This is coming from someone who started with greymatter in 1999.
Of course with a service like Tumblr, there are compromises. And that’s part of its charm: with less there is more. And though Karp has moved from unknown, to little-shit, and currently media darling, Tumblr still keeps most of its rakish “for you” community spirit.
So with this duality I am disappointed to see that Tumblr is is pulling my atari.tumblr.com subdomain and handing it over to Atari™ as part of a mostly tepid request on Atari’s part. Rather than educate Atari on it’s custom domain name services and maybe suggest tumblr.atari.com, it is quick to service brands no matter how far their fall from grace. Legally, my site does not barrow on the Atari brand or content so I’m not acting in bad faith. But unlike owning a top level domain name, Tumblr (not the user) owns the subdomain so ultimately it’s their decision. And since they probably don’t want to defend subdomains on the behalf of the non-trademark holder, the choice is pretty clear.
To a point, who cares? I’ll just get another sub-domain and have a silly story to tell over drinks right? So yes, it doesn’t really matter.
But in the micro-context of the web communities, it does.
Tumblr has very much built the same sort of McLuhan global village that began as Geocities muck and has ended up with Facebook brass. It proudly represents a range of content and is striving for great. And with great comes growth and a change of priorities, mostly financially driven. But is Tumblr’s way to to financial freedom simply the process of servicing brands with a hurried social pitch over a community of that hopes to build an archive?
To this I have no real answers and no real attacks, just conversation. Will the new atari.tumblr.com have an interest in conversation?
Nope.
Unless 4-square is hiring engineers who just signed on to The Internet, HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
Grow up and don’t choose major brands as your blog name.
Totally with Laura on this. No disrespect to Pete, who I don’t know. But word. This is not even a thing.
(Source: pcnofelt)
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@RickSantorum Well then I look forward to being reimbursed for any of my tax dollars that funded the Iraq War.
— Gina Marie (@ginambakkun) February 17, 2012
And here I’d been romanticizing 1977 in my head all this time.
Christ, what a list.
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This may have broken my mind a little bit.
The Lions Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. They have been swimming in arctic waters since before the dinosaurs (over 650 million years ago) and are among some of the oldest surviving species in the world.
The largest can come in at about 6 meters and has tentacles over 50 meters long. Pretty amazing when you think these things have been swimming around for so long.
They have hundreds of poisonous tentacles that it used to catch passing by fish. it then slowly drags in it’s prey and eats it.
That is terrifying.
never ever.
This kind of dumb (sorry) (not really) Quora thread about “epic” (please stop using that word) guitar solos reminded me of this epic (dammit) guitar solo that turned a very ignorant me into a very Prince fan.
I’m not one to geek out over guitar solos (I totally am), but this is pretty incredible. Looks effortless and sexy and now I’m going to quit guitar.
The whole thing is great, but the badassery really starts around 3’30”.

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