maybe the funniest way to handle a prophecy from the famous oracle at delphi. "i don't know what that is so i will not do it thank you"

I work cybersecurity, this is like half my job.

the whole vaccine deal tbh

antidepressants

Yes these are all the work of wizards

Constructing geographic edifices that challenge the boundaries of hilldom and devising exciting new dooms to meet upon them.

Best way I’ve ever seen academia described.

Fandom, academia, and Minecraft.

the plastic dress crow man booktok erotica is going to be the thing that finally ends fast fashion everyone say thank you plastic dress crow man booktok erotica

For all the issues the wolf reintroduction has caused in Colorado (wolf reintroduction=good, the way Colorado has done it=horrid), the one that I have not seen literally anyone talk about is the fact that everyone with a single goat went out and got a livestock guardian dog, chucked them out in the fields without any training, and just called it good. So now we've got a bunch of half feral livestock guardian dogs running around everywhere, just making up their own territories and attacking anyone who wanders through. One attacked my sister's CAR while she was going almost 30mph a few months back. Imagine if that had been a kid on an ATV, not an adult woman in an enclosed vehicle? When we called the non-emergency number to let them know, the dispatcher literally groaned and said, "not again. Nobody is training these things!"

"Wolves are going to start attacking people!11!" No, bitch, your fucking Anatolian Shepherd is.

Instincts still require training and refinement. You do not want a large, independent-natured dog making up its own rules. You will not like many of those rules.

And some individuals won't have good instincts and will require extra training, or plain won't work out.

English shepherds are herding dogs. Australian cattle dogs are herding dogs. My ES/ACD mix dog had zero herding instinct but would have made a decent livestock guardian. He had no desire to chase the sheep. When I *made* him chase the sheep he apparently assumed it was hunting time and bit the sheep. A sharp recall and he was back beside me showing no interest again in the sheep.

#friend of mine's parents got one of those giant bernese mountain dogs and didn't really bother to train it #just let it hang out in the yard and do whatever #chill dog but also didn't understand No or Stop and he apparently did finally attack someone so he had to be kept on a halter (FINALLY) #anyway that was also sort of their approach to parenting well meaning but ultimately no structure and minimal intervention #don't do this to either children or dogs (tags via @arinrowan because I know way too many people who do this to both children and dogs)

saw a post that claims that STEM smart people are smarter than humanities smart people because “any math student who speaks english can flip through an english book and understand it, but i’d like to see an english student do college math.” i have to say 1. holy disingenuous comparison batman, and 2. as someone who ta’d the english side of an english/biology fusion class, no the fuck they cannot. forget a collegiate level, we were struggling to teach these STEM major upperclassmen how to identify what’s on the page and articulate the themes on a high school level. the course texts were two YA novels and a handful of short stories. meanwhile all the humanities students were chugging through the biochemistry at what my colleague reported was an extremely respectable level. turns out that understanding what you’re reading is a skill just like any other, AND one with transferable applications

Convenience isn't bad because of some inherent value in toil or it rots your soul. Convenience is bad because it often comes at the cost of an exploited underclass. I don't care if someone wants to taxi their meal to their house instead of making it themselves or even driving to the restaurant themselves. I care that meal delivery apps underpay their workers (they don't even consider them their workers), provide no workplace protections, and prey on their desperation.

The desire for convenience is a morally neutral thing (no matter how many capitalists want their workers to see unproductivity or aversion to the "grind" as a moral failing). Companies that sell you only convenience by making it worse for yourself and for others are not.

I'm sorry but this is the exact thing I was talking about when I said "convenience does not rot your soul."

You talking to a person over the counter to order food at a restaurant is not an anymore meaningful interaction than talking to someone who delivered that food. Delivery and take-out have always existed. That option to pay more for that convenience has always existed. The major difference now is that most restaurants no longer employ people in-house to do delivery, because it's being done by contracted gig workers who get absolutely no benefits or protections. The major difference now are the working conditions.

I agree societal connections are good, but you just going outside to order food and the coming back is not meaningfullly participating in society. Removing deliveries or any sort of accesibility service (cafes not having wifi for example) will not force people to interact with strangers if they don't want to do that. Convenience facilitates people who already don't want to interact with others, but convenience isn't what's making people lonely! You cannot passively consume your way to community.

Most people aren't gonna talk or build relationships with folks in that restaurant. They're gonna eat and leave, and that's less "community building" than someone who ordered take-out so they can stay home to participate in an online book club or zoom their loved ones in another country. Do not romanticize past toils and lack of accessibility. Convenience and accessibility leads to people having more time to connect with each other, not less.

Actually, people are good by nature and you’re a fool if you think otherwise.

When you sneeze in public, strangers will say “bless you”, even though they don’t know you.

When you ask for directions on the street someone will show you the way, even though they have nothing to gain from it.

People squeeze their legs against the chair so you don’t have to hop over them on your way to your seat in the theatre, and make funny faces to make babies laugh, and purposefully step on leaves to hear them scrunch, and hold the door open for someone leaving behind them, and ask what floor you’re heading to when you enter the elevator, and send others photos of things that reminded them of them, and recommend each other songs, and ask if anyone else wants a coffee because they’re getting one, and make videos teaching how to sew a button, and wish on shooting stars, and share fun facts, and listen to others rant about things they don’t even understand, and let you cross the street first, and give a bit of their food to others, and laugh at jokes they don’t find funny to make you feel good, and listen to kids talk for hours about nonsense, and let you know your keys fell from your pocket, and they may be strangers, but with every little gesture they’re saying “I love you, I love you, I love you”.

God, I needed to read this today. Humanity is overwhelmingly full of hope and kindness and it’s very easy to forget that these days.

I will always choose to believe that there is more good in this world than I can ever know.

“Humanity is inherently evil and anyone acting kind is just pretending to get something out of you” uhhh, no I think that might just be you bud

Y’ALL!!

THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!

Jack Dorsey funded this with his nonprofit AndOtherStuff. The home page for the organization explicitly lists AI as one of its pillars, saying a goal is "making NOSTR the best social protocol for open source AI development and implementation"

What is open source AI?

It's a program that publicly shares its code for free online, so that anyone can use it for themselves. This means that anything this AI is trained on could eventually make its way into any business, social media site, etc. That uses this code. Or, if not, it'll have the ability to harvest content as well as this.

Even since the app doesn't allow AI openly on the videos themselves, the app is likely to use our original content to train its AI. You might have seen that some AI have experienced a positive feedback loop of declining quality, training itself on other AI slop until anything it produces is unintelligible.

This is likely an attempt to prevent that in video format

Then, any other company that wants to use the code can use this better trained AI to make it even harder to recognize AI across the board.

You can read about the connection to AndOtherStuff, as well as the developers' reasons for the project here:

TLDR; do not give Jack Dorsey any credit for this, do not download the app, and tell others not to either. It's a nostalgia-bait attempt at fueling another AI model

Spread the word

I see the pendulum is firmly in the "only idiot losers go into the trades, have fun being crippled at age 40". But not to worry, in another two months it'll be back to "nice student debt idiot, has your job been taken by AI yet?"

And so balance will be kept and everyone will be wrong forever

"The trades are backbreaking, thankless work that will CRIPPLE you for LIFE" not really anymore if you wear your PPE and do team lifts

"Yeah, tradespeople are raking in 6 figures and living the high life while you all drown in student debt!" Actually a lot of us also have student debt and while the trades can pay very well, you're unlikely to take home 6 figures without working an incredible amount of overtime. Union benefits are good though

"That's right, only the TOUGHEST and MANLIEST of men could possibly handle these jobs!" My apprentice is a fat 5'3 woman and she's doing the same job as you, calm down Rambo

"Yeah, literally anyone can do this stuff, that's why in the post capitalist utopian commune we'll all just take turns" it's still difficult and dangerous manual labor that takes intense training and skill to do properly

"Yeah we have to ACTUALLY work for our paycheck, not like those whiny white collar nerds who just sit at a desk all day" well I managed to slack off enough to write all this, didn't I

please read this story of a man accidentally discovering his wife is the world's best Tetris player

[image description: an excerpt of text that says:

“It’s funny,” I told Flewin. “We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She’s weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem.”

What Flewin said next I will never forget.

“Oh, my!”

/end id]

TL;DR on the article

The husband was writing an article on classic video game records, was surprised to find out that holding the Tetris record is a bit of a big deal, and mentions how good his wife is at it.

The guy he’s talking to mentions that the record is 327, way lower than his wifes usual scores of 500-600.

They travel to a tournament, and she goes to do her attempt. Just after she beats 327, and is climbing higher, a judge brings up to the husband that the specific version she’s playing actually has a different record of 545.

She overhears that she needs to beat 500-something, and keeps going, setting the record at 841.

which, they later find out, is her second-best record

There was a decent but ultimately forgettable fantasy novel I read a long time ago that had a single moment that stuck with me.

The protagonist has just won the world famous sword fighting competition in the big, rich capital and is talking to his mentor, and says something about being the best swordsman in the world. The mentor frowns and tells him that no, he isn't. He is the best swordsman out of the people that could afford to show up to this tournament. There could be a mercenary way out in the mountains, patrolling a snow encrusted fort's walls that could kick his ass and there was no way to know until he was already losing to the guy.

I think about that a lot, and how for every apparently dominant competitor, there might be a fucking ronin out there somewhere capable of destroying them.

Always reblog tetris ronin lady

When you point out to people who are against animal testing that there are potentially lifesaving medications that need to be tested on mammals before going to trials that could potentially harm human lives, they’ll say shit like “We should test on prisoners instead.” Bitch. Why are you working for PETA? The WW2-era Imperial Japanese Army needs you. There is suchhhhhhh a strong thread of fascism laced through the current animal rights movement and in so many animal rights spaces and they’re extremely transparent about it.

I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty

That scene from Community is so accurate, that is exactly how these people sound. Racism, ableism and classism often tangled with their crusade for ‘animal rights’ and their talking points often go against basic ethics and basic animal husbandry.

would be fun if language acquisition echoed language evolution a la recapitulation theory. kids going through an indo european phase.

https://xkcd.com/2567/

fuuuuuck there really is an xkcd for everything

Quick put an animal book in front of him and ask him what this guy is

there's an xkcd for that also

It is still wild to me that I legitimately have to research in a bikini in order to effectively collect data.

And the reason being is that people (of all genders equally) perceive me as a threat otherwise.

Like

Threat vs not a threat

People have said before that they are concerned I’m gonna get them in trouble, but I think the real reason folks get mean is that tourists effectively enter a liminal space when they go on vacations (especially American tourists on tropical vacations) and they don’t want anything to pull them out of that mindset.

So when I show up with a clipboard and wanting to talk while wearing an outfit that clearly says “I’m working, but not in any sort of position that exists in your vacation fantasy,” that pulls them out of the fantasy and they react negatively.

Meanwhile, if I’m dressed the same way everyone else is, even if I have a clipboard and want to talk about the same thing, I automatically become a wacky NPC who is part of the fantasy.

I no longer hear “It’s really weird that you’re just out here watching people” but instead “You get to lay on the beach all day and call it “work?” Hell yeah! Living the dream!”

Yes I study raccoons. The critically endangered pygmy raccoons like to live at beach clubs. My current study is looking at interactions between tourists and/or tourism industry staff and the raccoons.

Bedtime should work like in computer games where I lie down and click "yes" on a menu and then there's an eight hour timeskip and I can get up again all refreshed.

Apparently ICE now has agents posing as utility workers to get into people's homes. The electric and gas companies have posted information on how to tell if it's one of their workers, and numbers to call to confirm whether they've sent someone to do utility work on your house.

Stay safe, friends.

Some people have shared stories of suspicious “sales representatives” knocking on homes, asking about the home owners and who lives there, fishing for phone numbers, but do not provide business cards, company id, company phone numbers, etc when asked.

They come in pairs, never one person though one may hag back a bit. They have been seen using cars with significantly tinted windows, no business logos anywhere on the vehicle, or parking close to the home they walked up to only to drive away right after without visiting other homes, almost as if they’re not real sales people.

True door to door salespeople need a sort of peddler’s license, subject to city and county law, to solicit at your door. You can ask to see this permit. If they don’t provide one or make an excuse, they are likely bogus.

They wear a jacket with a company logo but likely don’t wear name tags and the Don’t provide id.

Tell them you’ll call the company about a noncompliant representative. Make them leave. Better yet not to open the door to them, and tell them nothing.

Actual sales reps also generally do follow “no soliciting” signs. Be aware, be safe, don’t give out your information or that of others under duplicitous means.

I sincerely cant remember the last time that staff rolled out a feature that improved this website in any way

When they moved the reblog button to the bottom of posts

Where was it before?

at the top we had to scroll all the way back up in order to reblog

Wh

What the fuck