Be The Gay You Want to See in the World

Tamar, she/her, older than I was yesterday and younger than I will be tomorrow

[roseunspindle]

Nancy Drew

[vastlyblindingfragment]

Imagine having to triage both of your dying friends. There on the door step of death. They both defy logic and all precedence and survive. They should be resting because you have no idea how they are even alive. And they are both incredibly traumatized. However when they wake up they start talking about some bullshit about lines. Are up and walking around to. When you know damn well they shouldn’t be.

[slavery]

[macbethz]

Fuck I’m at a fencing tournament and literally a minute after I reblogged this my dad told me that he talked to the point people and I’m probably going to win a medal.

[seananmcguire]

BURN BAGEL BURN

[gothiccharmschool]

OH WHY NOT?

[harukami]

I need to follow up to say I reblogged this last night, and this morning I got some of the best news of my life, like, a life dream come true news thing.

Bagel what are your powers

[acabosetotal]

FUCK, I though it was just another lucky meme but LISTEN. Since a week ago I was waiting a phone call to confirm me if I got a job or not in my university. I reblogged this yesterday’s night “just for fun and because I don’t want any bagel to be mad with me”, and today’s afternoon, while I was losing my time as always, the professor I was supposed to work with called me and asked me for my personal information to start working with her.

THE BAGEL POWERS ARE WAY TOO MUCH FOR THIS WORLD

[token-white-friend]

I GOT A JOB THE DAY AFTER MY QUEUE POSTED THIS THE FIRST TIME AND I JUST REALIZED IT WHEN I SAW IT AGAIN HOLY GOD

[noodle-dragon]

The bagel hasn’t let me down yet!

[tentacles-and-coffee]

Let’s see what you can do bagel

[redstonedust]

for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.

[ralfmaximus]

Neural Nets have existed for decades and are genuinely useful. It's a form of AI that recognizes patterns, and can do stuff like identify cancer cells, tell whether an egg is fertilized or not, detect fraud, and optimize routes.

Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.

And so on.

The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.

But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.

If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.

But they wouldn't understand any of it.

That's ChatGPT.

And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.

But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.

I fucking hate it.

[systlin]

Getting down on my knees and thanking the humans who invented dishwashers and washing machines.

[ihonestlydontknowwhattocallthis]

InsNe that dishwashers are more efficient and easier than just washing them manually but they also use less water. It’s a win win situation

[systlin]

They ALSO sterilize dishes, due to operating at a far higher temperature than human hands could ever tolerate. It's a win every way.

[ambidisastrous]

People who work within a system: okay so studies show that the normal system works 90% of the time, but because it’s very bad when it doesn’t work, we’ve set up a process to manage those outliers. We need six well-trained workers to run the system 100% of the time without any serious incidents.

CEOs and politicians, every time: Well i just saw it go right twice in a row which means the normal system which you say works 90% of the time actually works 100% of the time. We’re cutting the team down to one person pulling 18 hour shifts without breaks

[withaninotay]

Political & business decisions about safety being made using anti-vax logic. [I have never seen a bad outcome, it must therefore not be that bad . . . No, it is objectively terrible - that is why we don't LET it happen]

[writingwithcolor]

In a Star Wars fanfic I wrote recently, a black man (Finn) buys new clothes for himself to forge a new identity after a lifetime of stormtrooper uniforms. He winds up trying on and buying clothes, including dresses and skirts, that are colorful. However, it was later pointed out to me that a lot of black cultures get stereotyped as liking bright colors. Any advice on making sure I don't play into this stereotype? I just want him to have nice things!

Black People and Affinity to Bright Colors Stereotypes?

I’d be more concerned with your characterization of how to write a Black man.

For some reason, I associate Finn with the color orange and I don’t know why. We look good in bright colors and that’s not a bad thing. 

Maybe Finn wants to express himself after wearing black and white his entire life.

~Mod Brei

He can have all the nice things!

I don’t see a draw towards colorful clothing as a bad thing or a stereotype at all. Additionally, a lot of cultural clothing is bright, across races and yes, particularly in Black diaspora and African cultures too.

Bright colors pop against dark skin tones, making it a stand-out and appealing choice for many. Personally, I get the most compliments when I’m wearing yellow or a rich purple.

Look at these beauties and how glorious the bright colors look against their skin!

(From left to right: Lupita Nyong'o, Colman Domingo and Wunmi Mosaku

Sources: Reuters DailyMail, Getty Images, Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Go forth and embrace the bright!

~Mod Colette

[maureen2musings]

Scotney Castle, England

wander_linaa

[bisexuanal]

You can really tell who’s never experienced poverty and food insecurity when it comes to discussions around food costs and how unhealthy food is cheaper. Some fucker always comes in with the price of like… lettuce or… apples. And it’s like yeah bitch but can you work an 11 hour shift after eating some salad and an apple!?! Find me something cheaper, and more filling than the broke ass staples of boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs, noodles, bread, beans, and rice. I’ll wait.

It also ignores the mental toll that poverty takes like maybe your home made veggie filled recipe isn’t crazy expensive but it also involves prep time and cooking time and organization in terms of fresh food that a lotta poor people can’t manage.

Not to mention if you can only afford to get to the store once every couple weeks via bus or cab then you can’t keep fresh veg on deck.

But ya know.. poor people are just dumb and lazy.

[daco-showman]

why can rockstar games institutionalise you for life like nikita kruschev for being autistic

[transhuman-priestess]

He didn't steal 10 million dollars. They made that number up as a loss, they never fucking had it. Rockstar has spent more than a billion fucking dollars on GTA VI and will likely make billions more when it gets released.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

Capitalism is disgusting.

[fuckblast]

Nobody should buy GTA til they free Arion Kurtaj

[transhuman-priestess]

What with GTA VI going up for pre-order i'd just like to remind everyone that rockstar conspired with the UK government to lock an 18-year-old away for life for hacking them.

[josephbrassey]

The far rights obsession with the aesthetics of stoicism fascinates me because I’ve never seen any group of people more cloying and posturing about a philosophy that they embody less.

“be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.”

Can you imagine a single one of these men living up to that Marcus Aurelius quote? Or even trying?

Not a one.

I know why they do it, obviously. Fascism is a belief system of appropriated aesthetics, of iconography and imagery stripped of all their underlying ideas, their reputation stolen to prop up an impulse-driven tantrum of an ideology. I know this.

But it’s wild to watch.

[oatmealnebraska]

Blue Castle Book Club: The Wonders of Nature vs The Call of Nature

As LMM's nature writing turns from summer to fall and winter, I find myself wondering more about the loo situation at the cottage.

Was this ever discussed in TBCBC 2023?

This article gives an approachable introduction to the subject. Some highlights:

As a child growing up in late 20th-century Ontario, I wasn’t aware that the modern bathroom was a fairly new thing. [...] In 1947, the town council of Barrie was still trying to convince some local folks to install indoor plumbing and let go of their outhouses. It was reported that some 205 households in the town depended on an outhouse [...] Another type of privy was the dry earth closet. These could be used outdoors or in, as they were claimed to be fairly free of offensive odours. The dry earth method involved a vault of sifted soil which had more soil added after each use. Again, the contents were periodically removed to the kitchen garden.

While the indoor dry earth closet sounds preferable to an outhouse, and I would love to think of the cottage as having one, in the reading I've done about Muskoka at the time, it seems that having an outhouse would have been the standard arrangement, e.g.:

When a guy is in cottage territory, he tends to treat the whole outdoors as his toilet (gross but true), so I imagine that Barney's outhouse might have been somewhat neglected before Valancy arrived. Once she did arrive and her tidying of the cottage extended to the outhouse, he would have done his part in patching the roof or re-hanging the door or whatever needed to be done. And then in winter he would have been out shoveling early in the mornings to make sure she had a clear path.

So that's all fine.

What gets me is the other standard part of the outhouse arrangement, i.e., the chamberpot for night-time, typically stored under the bed.

Maybe I'm just looking at this from too modern a lens, but sharing a bedroom chamberpot with someone I'm deeply in love with, who only married me out of pity, seems *way* more awkward than whatever sexual relationship Valarney worked out between themselves. And this is Valancy, who grew up in a household of women - no father or brothers.

So, a mini-poll:

Which sounds more awkward, with someone you love, who you're not sure likes you back?

Having some degree of sexual relationship

Sharing a bedroom chamberpot

Neither - Valancy is fine with both

Nuance

Remaining time: 6 days 17 hours

[oatmealnebraska]

@bewareofitalics: #i was so happy not thinking about any of this XD

I'm dying at this tag - I'll put the rest under a cut, though, so that you don't have to think any further about it.

It's just that there are so many intimacies between married partners that have nothing to do with sex - and that must be so much more complicated to negotiate in a marriage that is in this liminal space between "real" and "not quite."

Barney and Valancy are part devoted husband and wife, and part new roommates committed to keeping key aspects of their independence. Valancy cooks and enjoys doing it, and Barney can cook when necessary - great; that works. Valancy cleans because she likes to be in a clean house, and Barney commits to making less of a mess - fine. Valancy wanted to mend Barney's clothes and sew on his buttons and now she has a chance to - brilliant. (Did she go back to her bedroom in Deerwood to get her old button-string, thinking how fortunate it turned out in the end that it had so many "commonplace," workaday buttons? The big gold and glass ones would have as much value for her now as Hamilton Gossard's cottage or a hypothetical million dollars.)

But what about laundry? Would Valancy offer to do Barney's - and if she did offer, would he say yes - or would one or both of them consider that to be crossing a weird boundary? @manyswarmsofbees posted resources about 1920s men's underwear and women's lingerie, and that got me thinking that something like doing someone's laundry can be a real dividing line between "roommate" and "spouse."

Again, we run into the ambiguity of where exactly they are on the good-chums-to-lovers spectrum, and I guess part of how I try to figure that out is by thinking about what other kinds of everyday intimacies I can picture them engaging in as well.

[bewareofitalics]

Heh, it's all valid and interesting to think about! It's just, wow, some parts of The Past really did suck, didn't they?

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

My job had a training on AI and I was surprised how honest it was about AI’s limitations and problems, and we spent our activity time finding errors and issues with responses made by AI. But it did beg the question, why would I use this

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

The trainer was like, think of AI as an intern, student worker, or new coworker! They can do tasks for you, but be sure to carefully check their work.

We just established that this “new coworker” is racist, sexist, and can’t do math - why would I ask for their help??

[withaninotay]

Louder for the executives in the back.

[absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog]

Book ask: 2, 8, 11

I already answered 2, but here's 8 and 11, thank you!

what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

My memories that far back run together, but I do remember one book that I still have called If You Were Born a Kitten. Years later, I found out that the author, Marion Dane Bauer, was a lesbian, and this delighted me.

what non-fiction books do you like if any?

One beloved non-fiction book of mine is The Letter Q: Queer Authors' Letters to Their Younger Selves, which is how I learned that Marion Dane Bauer was a lesbian, that Gregory Maguire was gay, and also how I was introduced to many queer icons, including Amy Bloom, Alison Bechdel, and Terrence McNally.

[popobana]

바다연못

[deadsetagainst]

australian sour patch kids have gluten in them i am truly at my fucking limit im crashing out im waging war against wheat idgaf anymore

[amvs]

oh is that one of those things where ableist companies put in traces of common allergens so they can just avoid the cost of making it safe

[deadsetagainst]

WHAT

[amvs]

Why Manufacturers Are Intentionally Adding Allergens to Their Foods

A trend we predicted in 2016 continues.

US based but it’s similar reasons in other countries. and of course many companies have international locations. idk if that’s why it’s happening with sour patch kids but this is a thing

[rosetintmyworld84]

I cannot even explain how ANGRY I am at this.

My nephew is very allergic to eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame. Last year my sister discovered all hot dogs and hamburger buns now contain sesame. Not "may contain", but listed in the ingredients. This year basically every brand of sliced bread also now contains sesame, making it very difficult to find bread items he can eat.

They're just adding it to their products, so they can just list it as an ingredient and not bother with worrying about cross contamination. And they aren't even bothering with telling anyone. Capitalism is going to kill us all.

"Which brings us back to Kellogg’s. Back in 2016, the company found a way around the added burden and expense of complying with the FSMA: they simply began adding trace amounts of peanut flour to their cracker products. Doing so allowed them to list peanuts as an ingredient of the product, freeing them from having to prevent cross-contact.

At the time, Kellogg’s notified Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) about the impending change and left it to them to warn the allergic community. In this case, Pearson’s didn’t even bother as near as we can tell."

[gothiccharmschool]

I wonder if that’s part of the reason behind my seeing an upswing in products adding corn starch or corn flour to things that didn’t have those before? <- rhetorical question, because I’m certain that’s what’s going on.

[draconym]

It's nuts how common it is to not allow children to be angry, even (especially) in households where adults are angry all the time. As a child I knew my own anger was unacceptable--not just expressing it outwardly but feeling it at all. So now as an adult my immediate reaction to my own anger is often to feel guilt instead of like. Noticing when someone is being rude or unfair or my boundaries are being violated or whatever. fucked up.