You have been offered a full-ride scholarship to get a four-year degree in this field, specifically. Upon graduation, you will be guaranteed a job in this field at the 75th percentile of average salary for the field, with the possibility of further advancement as the years go on.
However, you will never be able to get a job in any other field.
very polite. 10/10
One incredibly good girl
this crab has better table manners than some of the people I served when I was a waitress at the pub.
Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!
This distinguished gentlebeast appears to be a Smooth-handed Ghost Crab (Ocypode cordimana)!
They are members of the Ghost and Fiddler crab family Ocypodidae, and have a highly varied diet of plant/algal matter, other invertebrates, vertebrates, eggs, and carrion. They’re opportunistic and will try to get anything they can eat!
This species is also widely distributed across the Pacific and Indian oceans, where they can be found most active at night on beaches. Like other ghost and fiddler crabs, they typically stay hidden in their burrows during the day to avoid predators.
Grapes, as shown here, make for a delightful treat for captive Ocypodes; however, it should only be a treat and part of a balanced and varied diet including fish pellets, shellfish (such as clams), and veggies.
[ImageID: A small tan-and-beige ghost crab of the species Ocypode cordimana sitting on a sandy beach during evening hours. It has two large white claws with its right claw being slightly larger than the left. It has two black-colored eyes on eyestalks and a slightly pale pink-colored mouthparts called mandibles, maxillae, and maxilipeds. /. end ID]
Spreading Narrator propaganda
the fact that generative A.I. has created a completely new fundamental doubt in reality (checking to see if an artwork we see is manmade or not) and doubt in the instinct of enjoying art is unforgivable. its sickeningly tragic, and i mean it. NOTHING is worth this price and i hope that everyone will one day realize this.
This is literally how you actually improve ADHD symptoms btw
we as a society started to lose the day we lost the idea of “selling out” as a concept
Fifteen years ago the celebrity appearing in advertisements game felt like such immediately understood shorthand for “washed up has-been actor trying to scrape together some cash” and now you’ll see ads of everyone from “$20 million a year salary” Jimmy Fallon to your favorite “appears in 12 movies a year and only has speaking roles in half of them” character actor trying to get you to download Candy Crush to your phone. Every last person creating things on the internet these days is streaming the next big sponsored game with Square Enix or shilling their Surfshark discount code at the end of every video, no matter if they’re 14 viewer streamers or video essay producers with a whole setup or like, someone fucking just cooking in their kitchen.
I feel like we used to correctly think that shilling was a lame as hell thing to do that had a certain amount of shame associated with it, that it was this thing you might have to resort to but never really wanted to do, but now we live in an entire culture of how shilling is absolutely awesome and how plugging your Squarespace partnership definitely doesn’t make you sound like the biggest loser on the planet earth.
Algorithmic Repetition Propaganda
(Signal > Noise)
Most people don’t believe everything they see online.
They don’t need to.
Today's propaganda doesn't work as much by convincing you as it works by repeating itself until you stop resisting.
That's what algorithmic content delivery does. That's what the FYP is for.
You don't need to follow the account. You don't need to trust the post. You don't even need to agree. The system just needs you to see it, and see it, and see it...again and again. One video, one infographic, one carousel, until your brain fills in the edges.
The old propaganda required belief. The new kind just needs the frictionless repetition the algorithm delivers.
The algorithmic repetition has already shaped what they'll question, what they won't say, and what they'll assume. It'll fill in the blanks for them so they don't have any pesky curiousity to explore which might interrupt the narrative the algorithm supports.
That's what most people are missing when they say "come on, no one actually thinks that."
And there is little immunity to repetition.
Not if you're scrolling.
Not if you're online all the time.
Not if you're tired, distracted, and human.
Just me wondering what Sir Terry Pratchett would have done with this. So much of the world building in DW came from the concept of belief; and how powerful that is. We get new gods randomly created due to the belief in them, and similarly Old Gods losing power due to lack of belief.
What then, does this world do, when belief has been overthrown by something new?
Let's not conflate these two different meanings of "belief".
We're still building gods through belief. We're still feeding them with attention. The mechanism Pratchett described hasn't disappeared, it's just operating at machine speed now.
The God of False Binary is everywhere. It's adherents scream their prayers in the streets, every "if you're not with us, you're against us," two aggregations of unrelated positions welded unnaturally together, every issue falsely flattened into only two sides by simplifying, removing nuance, and preferring simple satisfaction to complex and uneasy truth.
The God of Grievance grows fat on algorithmic feeds designed to surface what makes us angriest, what makes us feel most wronged, most justified in our fury.
The God of Emotional Resonance doesn't care about truth, only that something feels true, that it confirms what we already suspect, that it vibrates at the frequency of our existing fears or hopes, confirming our biases and assuring us we're On The Right Side of History.
And maybe most insidiously, we have the God of Exhausted Acceptance. That one grows powerful not through fervent belief but through tired surrender.
Prayers include:
The old gods needed priests and temples. These new ones just need autoplay, the FYP algorithm, and the infinite scroll.
Pratchett's insight is still entirely valid. Belief has power, sufficient levels of belief makes things real.
We're just manufacturing that belief industrially now, feeding the algorithm's gods with every swipe, every watch-time metric, every moment we're too tired to question what we're seeing for the fifteenth time.
We're still subverting actual ethics to serve these gods.
New gods have learned to optimize their reach for a new age of followers, a new age of distributed congregations, and a new age of digital temples.
So if this is true, what is there to do about it?
Interrupt the loop:
Anything that stops the endless scroll is a win.
If you don't choose your inputs, the algorithm will choose them for you and it doesn't care what's true.
Practice intentional exposure:
If repetition is how propaganda sticks, then conscious repetition of complexity is the antidote.
Train your attention like a muscle:
The algorithm doesn't need belief, it just needs fatigue.
So rest. Turn off the feed when you're tired. Don't argue while drained. Learn to spot the difference between something that’s true and something that just feels true because you've seen it ten times.
Talk back out loud:
Narrate the bias. Name the framing. Say what’s missing. Propaganda thrives in silence and dissolves under shared analysis. Even small comments that restore nuance weaken the gods of simplification and grievance.
Rebuild your ethical immune system and your sense of credulity:
Keep asking: "Who benefits if I believe this? What does this flatten or erase? What am I not seeing?"
Repeat those questions as often as the feed repeats its content.
Create friction:
Repetition is powerful because it's smooth and easy.
So be a bump in the road. Ask the weird question. Refuse the binary. Share the third option. Break the format.
You can't resist every algorithmic push, but you can RECOGNIZE WHEN YOU'RE BEING NUDGED AND CHOOSE TO LEAN BACK AGAINST IT.
Konstantin Vasilyev (Russian, 1942-1976)
That post about this site being a better social media platform over Twitter because of the lack of algorithm bullshit was not kidding. Every time I go on there, it's painfully obvious that everything runs of engagement. "Wait for it" videos, shock slop, AI images and videos, rage bait, outrage bait; anything that grabs your attention for more than a second "wins". And it's very good at hijacking your dopamine where you get addicted. Now to figure out how to router block it
Have you guys noticed how much the internet/technology just does not listen to you anymore? I click “don’t show this artist” on Spotify and I get recommended a music video by them on the front page. I click “skip this update” on a pop up every time I open a file organization app and it’s right back there every time. O click unsubscribe on a newsletter and it keeps showing up in my inbox!! I click “delete my account” and the next time I open the website they suggest I “reactivate”.
Power is a funny thing.
They quite literally do not care how you feel and more and more tech is becoming centralized into virtual monopolies and their idea of “optional” is essentially “you don’t have to use technology or participate in society 🤷” since legally it must be optional but they just use a twisted definition knowing full well EVERYTHING runs around technology so you’re stuck using at least some of it…
( Anyone interested can try simplex chat and join the groups PSA-2, Homelab, file sharing & digital archival and intranet. We talk about this stuff a lot and how you can self host things, get away from all of this, etc. )
An archivist found a long forgotten 8mm film reel in an old metal box, marked “Philippines 1942”. Thinking it was lost WWII footage, he sent it in to be restored/digitized. When he got the footage back, he found puppies instead (via)
This is so freaking profound. Like, this was before the advent of the personal camera. Not just anyone owned a camera in these days. Cameras were expensive, and so was the film. When you were recording shit, it had to be stuff you were willing to shell out a pretty penny to have preserved. Someone so deeply and profoundly loved these dogs and found joy in them that they decided to preserve them for future generations to see, after these pups are long dead and gone. This camera operator wanted to preserve the joy these dogs brought them and to share it with others. How incredible is that?
🌾🌾🌾
Harvesting my wheat
Hehehehehe
Can I fucking help you?
my senior english teacher told me that any scene with a woman in a cornfield in every piece of literature ever is about her journey to womanhood/pleasuring herself in the field and i just.... believed her
What
What
me and u both ouppy
