re-posting bc reblogs got turned off etc

hey it’s ok if you lost your ai virginity back when you were uneducated. a lot of posts go like “reblog if you have never ever used generative ai and never ever will!!!” but it’s ok if you have used gen ai before and it’s even ok if you used to think it was cool, back before you understood what it really was and how it worked, either because no one had taught you about it and you discovered it on your own or because the only education you had received about it was from the tech bros. you’re not a burger with a bite out of it for having used ai. ok

It is 100 percent okay to stop using it today and join the "boo AI" club.

This isn't a purity thing. This is a "everyone stand with us against destroying the environment and giving asthma to poor people" thing.

Did you know that when one community says no to an AI data center, they specifically search out communities with fewer resources? Communities that can't defend themselves? And the pollution 100 percent affects their health and wellbeing, in addition to burning through our already scarce drinking water.

You can stop using character.ai today. You can say "I listened to the facts and stopped." And another thing: don't you think it's a bit more impactful to have used it, stopped, and then you're in a position to say how little it helped? How doing things for yourself improved your life?

also posts in the spirit of "if you've used AI even ONCE your soul is tainted!!!!" can't be great to those with OCD

Congress is now considering the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding runs out at the end of January.

Call your members of Congress and tell them to vote NO on any bill that increases ICE's funding.

Please demand that the DHS appropriations bill prohibit ICE and Border Patrol agents from carrying guns and that it unambiguously declare that agents do not have absolute immunity under the law if they harm civilians.

Also tell them that any bill must restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s ability to conduct dragnet arrest operations and target people based on their race, language or accent. And the bill must clarify that ICE agents are liable under civil and criminal law if they harm civilians.

Do this as soon as you can.

To reach your representative or senator, call the U.S. Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Tell them the state and city where you live. They will connect you to any member’s office.

collecting these

HOW could i forget this classic

I hate my dash because when someone posts about an Arthur and John i can never guess if it's lester and doe, holmwood and seward or morgan and marston so i just end up being wildly confused until i see the tags because i somehow ALWAYS assume wrong

Honorable mention: someone mentions The Count. Dracula?? Of monte cristo?? Dutch's fucking horse??

if i had seen the transition from sepia to color in wizard of oz in 1939 i would have lost my shit i would've started screaming in the theater

Okay no but like, I am still SO ENAMORED by this transition y’all, ‘cause when Dorothy opens the door of the house onto the colors of Oz, the inside of the house is still sepia toned. And they did that by literally making the interior and the costume and everything SEPIA TONED. You had a double for Judy Garland in a specifically-created sepia-toned dress, in a sepia-toned set, opening the door, backing out of frame, and then the Dorothy that steps back into frame is Judy Garland in her full color costume and makeup, stepping out into the color set.

It’s just

Y’all it’s such a GREAT EFFECT, and this was before computer effects and green screen, it was all practical and yeah it feels like nothing now, but at the time, man, not only was technicolor new, but I’m pretty sure no other movie had done a transition out of b/w or sepia into color, and even knowing it was a technicolor film, that must have just been fucking wild to see! It still is wild to see!! It’s so good.

The technique of switching between double and main actor without an edit is called a Texas Switch and it's still used today, it's very neat to have something so simple yet tricky persist pretty much just because it genuinely looks better to do it with timing than with editing.

WET BEAST WEDNESDAY

one of my favorite wet beast for this wednesday

#mybal

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.

every major structural social problem right now is basically "we don't have enough skilled workers on the ground" and the reason is always "well we've been intentionally underpaying and understaffng them for decades to increase corporate profits" and somehow the news always just mentions the "shortage" without digging into the cause

air travel is a mess? shortage of air traffic controllers - for some mysterious reason

logistics a mess? shortage of truck drivers - for some mysterious reason

public transit can't meet demand? shortage of bus drivers - for some mysterious reason

We even mysteriously have shortages of doctors, nurses, teachers... FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON

FUCKING PAY PEOPLE AND HIRE ENOUGH STAFF

"People don't want to work anymore" for some mysterious reason.

im not even the type of guy to go "actually it's frankenstein's MONSTER" because a painting by rembrandt or picasso or any other artist is often called "a rembrandt" or "a picasso" as shorthand. so in this respect frankenstein's monster can be considered "a frankenstein"

darling I love your 8 foot tall patchwork flesh creature, it really livens up the place. is that an authentic frankenstein?

it's only a true frankenstein if it was produced in the frankenstein region of switzerland. otherwise it's just a sparkling homunculus

i had a dream that time travel was invented and too many people choose to travel back in time to save the titanic from sinking (the question of whether unsinking of the titanic deserved so much attention in the face of human history was the subject of both heavy academic and online discourse), which caused a rift in the space-time-continuum that led to the titanic showing up indiscriminately all over the world’s oceans and sea in various states of sinking.

this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.

anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:

no you don't understand. i do international regulation of emerging technologies for a living. this WAS me stress dreaming about work

I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"

IDK what this is about, but I want to know more.

This isn't exactly the same idea but it could be but there is more rattling around in here so:

• The Blitz here manages to qualify as Britain's Darkest Hour, thus triggering the return of Arthur from the Realm Avalon.
• He does not speak a lick of modern English. He speaks an unholy mishmash of Brittonic and Late Classical Latin.
• (Honestly I can see the latter becoming a plot point if they manage to get their hands on a Roman Catholic priest to act as a translator. It wouldn't be a perfect arrangement, but probably better than anything else.)
• Truthfully he probably gets mistaken for a madman.
• Somehow manages to steal a Spitfire out from under the RAF's nose, proceeds to use it to bring down like half an enemy squadron on his own, then lands in a field in the middle of nowhere.
• Police and RAF converge on his location on account of the whole "stealing a plane" thing. They eventually overwhelm him with sheer numbers, but he manages to knock out an impressive number of them in the process. I mean, come on. It's Arthur.

"a catholic priest" i mean yeah sure why not but JRRTOLKIEN himself was alive and a teacher at the time so go big or go home.

You know what sure why not let's just make literal real-life JRRT himself a character in this Arthurian return story, he deserves it.

@seajr DUDE

And to think that it takes very little to make a child happy....

Off topic but this is too good not to share with the world!

That poor excavator operator: DON'T FUCK THIS UP DON'T FUCK THIS UP

[Video Description: a child runs up to a construction site on the side of the road with a big (relative to the child) dump truck toy. they are greeted enthusiastically by the workers on the site, and put down the truck before being pulled away by their parent. the excavator then pulls up a little bit of dirt and puts it into the dump truck toy. the child is jumping up and down, visibly delighted. end description.]

Gif under the cut 👇

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