today is the start of the 100th good omens rewatch!

making my cat watch with me because she simply must be exposed to the greatest media ever created :)

that purple rain audio where it specifically goes "such a shame our friendship had to end" but its ineffable husbands

send post

in which I am both at the same time…somehow

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.

It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence lies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

I wish more people were familiar with Gell-Mann Amnesia. It was originally coined to refer to media reporting specifically, but I feel like it applies just as well to ai now.

The phenomenon is this: you see a piece of writing (or an ai approximation) of something in your area of expertise. You see all the mistakes, misrepresentations, inaccuracies. You can see that it's poorly produced, inaccurate trash. You see a piece of writing from the same outlet (or an ai approximation) of something in a field about which your personal experience is limited. It looks plausible enough to pass as probably all right to you, and you give it no further scrutiny, assuming it's correct and fine.

But like... did you forget about the fact that it was produced by the same thing that made an absolute fucking dog's breakfast of the thing you actually know about. Now, more than ever, we all need to hold the idea of this phenomenon in our mental back pocket. Like... please.

Somebody take photoshop away from me

Actually babe, I'm sitting on the floor in front of ur computer biting the ankle of anyone who tries to take Photoshop away from you.

The linked article

This article is genuinely insane. I learned to read at the same time and it was completely different. I was taught to sound out the words and if I came across a word I didn't know, they did suggest we use context clues to figure out the meaning, but it was also made clear that that was not a perfect solution and the best option is always to look it up. But seriously, just a memorizing? That is inside.

I taught English as a second language for over ten years. In order to become a proficient reader in English, most kids will need to be explicitly taught phonics. To become proficient in Japanese, you need to learn radicals.

Three-cueing is essentially crutches that help you get by but let you down eventually. It's very common when learning a foreign language, I misread kanji sometimes because I pattern-recognize based on context instead of really looking. The solution is to do some proper studying, but I don't wanna.

It's also interesting that this sort of contexual confabulation and pattern-recognizing is how LLMs work. Not sure what to do with that.

Absolutely fantastic article, but I do want to say that this...?

... Is absolutely terrifying in the context of all other anti-intellectualism happening right now. This guy is STILL pushing his 'observations' while denying evidence that it doesn't work.

Woman in the article with a genuine and apparently severe reading disability talking about how she taught herself to read as a child too ashamed to ask for help because she was brilliant and excelling everywhere else in the 1990's:

Strategy 1: Memorize as many words as possible. "Words were like pictures to me," she said. "I had a really good memory."

Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?

Strategy 3: If all else failed, she'd skip the words she didn't know.

That same woman observing her child being taught to read by a teacher in 2019:

"I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

WTF?

Children should not be taught how to read with the half-assed, impromptu methods a child bad at it uses to cope on their own and make up for their inability. That will NEVER teach them to read the right way.

Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words. Instead, he argued that as people read, they make predictions about the words on the page using these three cues:

This is a deeply egotistical man with a learning disability trying to validate himself and make himself the norm.

There's nothing wrong with a learning disability of any kind, but forcing the way someone copes with that to be the way EVERYONE is taught the material is.

Reading and writing ARE precise processes with clear steps and guidelines, not a GUESSING GAME.

Huh, that's abruptly explained a thing that's been driving me mad for years, when people are reading aloud something I've written and they just say completely the wrong word. Instead of actually reading it, they're guessing what it might be. Jesus fucking Christ.

i want to copy this from the replies, because i've read all these articles and listened to the whole Sold a Story podcast on this issue and this paragraph does a good job summing up what exactly went wrong, to my understanding at least:

Fair warning, this isn't going to be anything close to a cohesive response, just a bunch of thoughts.

On the bright side, it looks like some states have been rolling out legislation to advise reading instruction based in phonics, and even ban cueing in some states. It's even fairly bipartisan!

This is the article (which also has more on what @dragontastical said above):

I am absolutely biased here because of my experiences with districts choosing curricula based on sales pitches, but any time I see a law requiring or banning certain types of curricula, I want to know who gets to make the decision on what counts and what they base that decision on. Is it education professionals and researchers, or is it career politicians? Is it based on what the publisher says about their curriculum and their sample lesson, or do the decision makers have access to the the entire curriculum and all its materials?

Personally, I'd like to see more requirements on teacher training, ensuring that preservice teachers are taught accurate science about reading and taught how to read and evaluate the research themselves. It wouldn't fix the scripted curriculum issue, but it would make more teachers able to identify the bad practices in scripted curricula and work around them.

That's a great point re: who is enforcing this! Though I think it is, if not a step in a better direction, then at least indicative of a larger cultural shift in a better direction. I absolutely agree that teacher education programs need to be held to a better standard as well-- the article also points out that individual teachers get around the legislature if they don't believe in the changes, or just don't know how else to teach.

The comparison to LLMs above is apt, because one of the things that gobsmacked me about this when I first heard of it was: it teaches kids to guess at what a text says, based on what they already know and assume. And that is the opposite of what reading is for.

If you want to just make something up based on your preconceptions, you can do that on your own, for free! If you're reading it's because someone wanted to communicate with you, and pass on knowledge you don't already have. That's the purpose of written language. It is an essential function of reading that it can surprise you. The most interesting and important texts are the ones where you can't actually guess at an unfamiliar word because it's telling you something new.

This is a strong contender for my favorite exchange I’ve ever seen on the internet

Reblog if you've seen a White person before but did not have a camera to document the encounter.

This is what years without new content does to a fandom

i think she would like that

I’m in this photo and I don’t like it 😂😭

One time my grandfather picked me up from the airport and was driving me home and asked if I wanted to stop at McDonald's. And I was like sure, we can stop at the one in [town].

And he was like "we don't need to go to [town], we'll just go to the one in your town. And I said my town doesn't have a McDonald's. And he was like "okay, we'll go to the closest one". And I was like right, the one in [town]. And he said "that's twenty minutes away from your house, you really don't have one closer?" And when I confirmed that he said "well, it doesn't have to be McDonald's. It can be whatever fast food place is in your town." And I was like there is no fast food in my town. There is no food in my town period unless you want to stop for gas station hot dogs. And he was like "that doesn't make any sense. Then what do you do when you need food?" And I said I drive to [town]. And he said "every single time you need food or groceries?" And I said yeah, that's sort of how the fixed nature of buildings work. And then we drove in silence for ten minutes while this man tried to wrap his head around the fact that I had to drive twenty minutes to town to go grocery shopping.

Anyway a lot of you remind me of this experience pretty much every time the urban/rural divide comes up on this website.

I'm really enjoying that this is picking up notes because most of them are people like "oh yeah, 20 minutes isn't even that bad, I have to drive an hour to my [town]" and then there's a handful of people freaking out like "oh my god, are Americans okay??? Shouldn't your government be doing something about this????"

Idk what the government is gonna do about it man, I think me and my 6 neighbors within walking distance are just gonna have to keep driving to [town]

Reading through the notes on this is wild because they seem to fall into three groups:

haven’t watched this show or read the books but i can’t stop thinking about how much fun tumblr in the heated rivalry universe would be on the day the main characters’ relationship finally goes public

heated rivalry universe dashboard simulator circa 20XX

🏒thatraiderlife Follow

as a gay person i am so impressed with ilya rozanov and shane hollander's bravery in coming out at the peak of their careers (while captaining two of the best teams in the league!) and think this has the potential to have an incredibly positive impact on the state of homophobia in men's professional sports and sports fan culture, as well as the mental health of gay players at every level. however as a boston fan who is still bitter about ilya transferring i hope jakey dies

35.7k notes

🦈 alldayidreamaboutsjsharks Follow

ANOTHER WIN FOR MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE RPF

17.2k notes

👩🏻‍⚕️ cristinayangsdefenseattorney Follow

.

#okay obviously this is soooo selfish and i swear i'm happy for those hockey guys and all #but my favorite ever ao3 author got really into hockey rpf a while ago #and now i'm worried this is just gonna inspire them even more #and they're never gonna get back to the grey's anatomy multichapter wip i followed them for :( #i know fic authors don't owe updates but like. ugh. whatever #do not rb

4 notes

👑 prince-rozanov Follow

SINCE 2008?!

😇 angelofthe-lord Follow

me when i remember how long it's been since castiel debuted on supernatural

25.9k notes

🎿 sidneycrosbysyellowcrocs Follow

i get that everyone's having fun and all but they're not even the first openly gay professional hockey players on their respective teams. like maybe calm down a little

56 notes

👑 prince-rozanov Follow

not gonna name names but wow some people really want to minimize the bravery it takes for two queer men to be open about their relationship in a professional athletic environment just bc said queer men don't play for their preferred hockey team lmao

#your homophobia is showing babe!

248 notes

👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏼 harry-and-barry Follow  

so you're telling me those two hockey players who people shipped for a literal decade just admitted they're a couple for real?

🎮 hideokojimafeetpics Follow

op is a harry styles x barack obama shipper btw. like they're saying this gives them hope harry styles and barack obama are going to admit their secret decade-plus relationship too. just in case you forgot that most rpf shippers are completely insane

👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏼 harry-and-barry Follow

oh so now the death stranding mpreg blog wants to preach to us

6.3k notes