Matt Lehrer

adamlaiacano:

I’ll be here at the strata conference all week. If you’re intersted in talking about data projects at tumblr, come say hello! Hit me up on twitter @adamlaiacano.

And, of course, we’re hiring engineers and data scientists.

Tommypom reblogging you is the new About page.

It’s been almost nine years since I graduated from college and moved away from Philly, but I still love the city and put this together 8/1/09 when some friends were going and looking for tips. I’ve forwarded it a bunch of times since but it makes much more sense here.

SEE AND DO:

If you want to take a few hours just walking through the city, I’d recommend walking from Penn’s Landing, wandering through Old City (say between Front and 6th St / Spruce and Market) for a bit then west along Walnut. Hang a right on 9th and walk north about 5 blocks and wander around through Chinatown. Don’t miss Reading Terminal Market at 12th and Filbert / Arch. Look at the sculptures, gargoyles and detail under City Hall, maybe look at the Academy of Music / Kimmel Center, grab some oysters and a beer at Sansom Street Oyster House (b/w 15th and 16th on Sansom) and then relax in Rittenhouse Square. 

There’s also a new neighborhood, named after I moved, called Northern Liberties. It’s just north of Old City so it might make sense to start that walk there but I don’t know enough about the neighborhood to vouch for it yet.  

If you don’t want to just walk around for hours, here are my favorite things to see and do:

Philadelphia Museum Art - this is where the Rocky steps are

Main St in Manayunk

Walk Society Hill / Old City / Liberty Bell, etc.  Favorite architecture in the city.

Italian Market

Reading Terminal Market

EAT:

Favorite deli / sandwich / food in Philly: Koch’s. My favorite is the Penn Special but I don’t think you can go wrong with anything on the menu.

Favorite cheesesteaks: Tony Luke Jrs (by Rittenhouse, now called “Tony Jr’s”) and Dalessandro’s in Roxborough.  Note: Dalessandro’s is closed Sundays. If you can do it at night, a drive along the Schuylkill on the west side to see the lit up boathouses would be good (West River Drive / Martin Luther King Drive) to get there is perfect. The original Tony Luke’s is great but there’s probably nothing close to it to make the trip worth it compared to Tony Jr’s which is right where you’ll want to be. 

Favorite pizza: Tacconelli’s: 2604 E Somerset St (northeast philly) you have to call ahead and reserve a dough, pretty out of the way, but worth it.

Less famous places to eat: 

Dahlak: Ethiopian food, 47th and Baltimore Ave, gritty neighborhood, dinner only

Rx: American, 45th and Spruce, I just went back here last fall and it was excellent

Lee How Fook: most authentic Chinese I’ve had in the US, 11th St and Spring in Chinatown

Monk’s: Belgian, 16th and Spruce, best beer in the city, usually very crowded.

YOU:

What did I miss?

bijan:

This morning I saw an interesting post on Hacker News - I’ve Lost Enthusiasm For My Startup.

This happens from time to time and it can come for a variety of places. The founder isnt’ happy with the culture. Or the product isn’t taking off as quickly as they had hoped. Or they are fearful of failure. Or there is something else going on in their personal life that has impacted their work life.

Whatever the reason, they are in a funk.

We all go through it. For founders is incredibly hard because as the author of the post states:

I find myself doing things for the startup out of obligation to the investors, who have been awesome.

And as result, it’s hard going to your board members or investors and saying you’ve lost that feeling or you don’t know what you are doing and you are going through a funk. Some investors will understand but many others (unfortunately and sadly) will take that information, forget the founder is a human and decide they are unfit to serve as CEO. 

(I once had a founder tell me 6 months after we financed the first round that they dont’ like any of their initial hires. He actually fired the first 4 employees and started over. That wasn’t easy for anyone but looking back it was clearly the right thing to do)

Even if they won’t do something like that it’s still hard to make that confession outloud. 

I don’t have a secret silver bullet on how to deal with the funk but I think it’s important to spend the time thinking about what is the cause. Is it work related or personal related? 

When I’m in a funk, I try to practice these four things:

1. Work out more

2. Eat better

3. And talk it through with my wife and my coach

4. Patience through the process

In startup land where everyone is hyping their startups and investments, it’s easy to get down on yourself from time to time. The first hard step is being honest with yourself and then take it from there. 

How do you deal with the funk? 

James Altucher’s “How to be the luckiest guy on the planet in 4 easy steps” deals with this same issue. I’m trying out some of the tips now.

staff:

One of the great things about Tumblr is that people use it for just about every conceivable kind of expression. People being people, though, that means that Tumblr sometimes gets used for things that are just wrong. We are deeply committed to supporting and defending our users’ freedom of speech, but we do draw some limits. As a company, we’ve decided that some specific kinds of content aren’t welcome on Tumblr. For example, we prohibit spam and identity theft.

Our Content Policy has not, until now, prohibited blogs that actively promote self-harm. These typically take the form of blogs that glorify or promote anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders; self-mutilation; or suicide. These are messages and points of view that we strongly oppose, and don’t want to be hosting. The question for us has been whether it’s better to (a) prohibit them, as a statement against the very ideas of self-harm that they are advancing, or (b) permit them to stay up, accompanied by a public service warning that directs readers to helplines run by organizations like the National Eating Disorders Association.

We are planning to post a new, revised Content Policy in the very near future, and we’d like to ask for input from the Tumblr community on this issue.

Here’s what we think the right answer is:

1. Implement a new policy against pro-self-harm blogs. Here’s draft language we are planning to add to our Content Policy:

Active Promotion of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or mutilate themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seek counseling or treatment for depression or other disorders. Online dialogue about these acts and conditions is incredibly important; this prohibition is intended to reach only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification. For example, joking that you need to starve yourself after Thanksgiving or that you wanted to kill yourself after a humiliating date is fine, but recommending techniques for self-starvation or self-mutilation is not.

We aim to begin implementing this policy next week. Of course, we will allow any affected blogs a grace period in which to edit or download your content.

2. Start showing PSAs on search results for related keywords. In addition, we plan to start posting “public service announcement”-style language whenever users search for tags that typically go along with pro-self-harm blogs. For example, when a user searches for tags like “anorexia”, “anorexic”, “bulimia”, “bulimic”, “thinspiration”, “thinspo”, “proana”, “purge”, “purging”, etc., we would show PSA language like:

Eating disorders can cause serious health problems, and at their most severe can even be life-threatening. Please contact the [resource organization] at [helpline number] or [website].

So that’s our plan. We’d like your feedback. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email them to policy@tumblr.com.

shitmystudentswrite:

It was at the Jewish barmitsfa that a young boy gets circumscribed, which means having the tit of his penis cut off ritualistically speaking.

Kids.