Yumblr, Tumbloo, etc.

Yahoo! has officially acquired Tumblr.

This has spawned a few "please don't ruin Tumblr" pleas, on account of Yahoo's poor history with other internet acquisitions. Flickr, remember, was the go-to place for photography, until Yahoo! neglected it for years.

But this is a new Yahoo, with more forward-thinking leadership. Already, we've seen that with Flickr, which has gotten a major redesign as well as a new iPhone app.

Tumblr will continue to exist as its own self, under the umbrella of Yahoo. This relationship should work for both parties—to borrow from Slate's Matthew Yglesias, Yahoo is a company that needs growth, while Tumblr is one that needs cash. Both get something valuable out of this relationship.

As for what will happen to the culture at Tumblr, I defer to Marco Arment:

Buying Tumblr is a big enough deal for Yahoo that they clearly aren’t intending to ruin it or shut it down — like YouTube and Google, Tumblr will probably become an extremely important part of Yahoo indefinitely. And I believe they’ll do a good job with it. Yahoo today is a very different company than the Yahoo that neglected Flickr for years — it has extremely competent new leadership making bold changes. (Including fixing Flickr.)

More importantly, it gives David, and the rest of Tumblr’s team, the freedom to continue making the best product they can while offloading a lot of the grunt work to Yahoo’s leadership, staff, and infrastructure.

Pitchfork on Daft Punk

I'm not sure how I'd describe this Pitchfork feature on Daft Punk. It suffices to say, however, that it's one of the most inventive uses of web design I've seen in awhile. If your computer can handle it—yes, that's a real concern—you should check it out.

The piece is good too.

How Poachers Stole Ten Percent of an Entire Tortoise Species

That was just the beginning. The poachers are stopped by the Thai government, the tortoises are saved, and then...they start dying:

The news of the seizure made headlines around the world, but what has not been widely reported until now is that within a few weeks of the rescue nearly half of the tortoises had died, a terrible blow toward efforts to keep this species from extinction. The remaining tortoises, which were destined for the illegal pet trade in Thailand and China before their rescue, are currently in a Thai wildlife rescue center while international organizations see what they can do to help keep the rest alive and healthy, or even eventually return them to Madagascar. Unfortunately, that might not be an easy task.

Given what humans do to each other, I'm not surprised by poaching and animal abuse. It just depresses the hell out of me.