AlexClaain

| Alex (they/them) | 25+ | German | dysfunctional writer

[banhmigoddess]

My one boring tip to anyone in their 20s is to resist the temptation to rot in your room every time you get a free moment. Dismiss any neuroses you have about going outside and "being perceived". Be a dictator about it, plan your hangouts like they are binding commitments. No excuses! Go to the bar with your friends. Be kinda hungover at work. Socializing is like exercise; even if you don't feel like you want to, you should still do it because it's good for you.

[tahthetrickster]

socializing works a little bit like a car battery and alternator. if you continue to make yourself go out and do things, your social alternator makes it infinitely more manageable for you to continue to go out and do things. if you let yourself be completely idle for too long, the alternator doesn't get to keep charging your battery and eventually it runs completely down and it's nearly impossible to go out and do stuff with a dead social battery. you can always get it jumped again by a friend who's willing to do so, but as with a real car battery it's kind of a whole Thing and the first time out with a jumped battery is still really shaky and weird and anxiety-inducing and all of this could've been avoided if you'd just gone to the arcade or whatever

[lesvegas]

People who shave, particularly women: Do you ACTUALLY shave for 'sensory reasons'?

Woman - Yes, I shave primarily for sensory reasons

Other - Yes, I shave primarily for sensory reasons

Woman - No, I shave mostly for other reasons (appearance, like to, etc)

Other - No, I shave mostly for other reasons (appearance, like to, etc)

Woman - I don't shave

Other - I don't shave

Woman - Nuance that isn't "sensory reasons are a bonus"

Other - Nuance that isn't "sensory reasons are a bonus"

Remaining time: 3 days 15 hours

Reason I'm asking is because while I haven't shaved anything below my neck in years I did recently shave my face and I've woken up with my neck red and itchy from the stubble irritation for days now. I don't plan on shaving again unless I absolutely have to. I also remember finding the process of shaving my legs and underarms too much of a hassle to be worth it long before I started my transition.

Also, friendly reminder that shaving isn't actually more hygienic than not shaving and could even lead to infections, particularly shaving the pubic area.

[sadclowncentral]

so many misguided metaphors around violence and desire. if the open maw of a panting beast fills you with the want to be devoured, that does not make you prey. while the rabbit trembles in fear, its deepest desire is to run. evolution demands it. in fact, the desire to be eaten does not make you any small animal at all.

it makes you a fruit.

[sumverendus]

[sandpancakecat]

[blumineck]

I get why they do it, but if I picked up a bow and it sounded like this, I’d be signing up for the shield wall instead!

[thoodleoo]

been reading cicero's rant about words being given obscene meanings and i don't think i've ever seen a latin sentence that made me burst into such immediate and violent laughter before

[thoodleoo]

had a couple people be like "i have no idea what this means" so to clarify: the word penis in latin originally meant tail and only later got the sense of, uh. penis. so this is cicero complaining that nowadays all these hooligans are using the word "penis" for naughty purposes

[gummybearattacktheworldofdespair]

[sapphic-gengar]

BRING HIM BACK

[gummybearattacktheworldofdespair]

[sapphic-gengar]

oh thank goodness

[64mpg]

ads targeted to women: omg you are thirtyyyy. kill yourself

[flannelgirlfriend]

I love this post so much my friend put it on my 30th birthday cake

[ndnbutch]

personally I am of the opinion that vegans who are like “the way our food system currently works under capitalism on a large scale is exceptionally cruel to all animals including humans and is not sustainable, so I’m doing what I can to make the most ethical choices available to me about what I eat and encourage others to do the same” are generally very reasonable people who I agree with in spades. but vegans who seem to think human beings are not themselves animals who are ultimately also part of the food chain but instead some kind of other paternalistic higher entity that can never engage in ethical and sustainable hunting practices (and especially the fringe I’ve seen who think other carnivorous animal predators are also evil and need to be eliminated) are people I regard as foolish at best if not actively anti-indigenous and racist

[redstonedust]

nobody numa numas like they used to

[redstonedust]

(wistfully) mai-ia-hee... mai-ia- hoo....

[whyenn-reader]

you are not immune to inventing an arbitrary set of rules that only you have to adhere to

[6mayhem]

mr. substance abuser has a suggestion for how we should spend the afternoon

[quinnactually]

that's MS. substance abuser to you

[6mayhem]

sorry women sorry sorry sorry you can kick me really hard in the head

[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.

[rainydaydecaf]

I never saw people say stuff like this enough when I was a teenager, so I’m saying it now.

I’m in my mid-thirties and I have never had sex. I’ve thought about it and could have had one or two opportunities if I put in more effort, but I always decided against it because I just wasn’t into it at the time.

I can safely say that I do not feel I have missed out on anything. I was perfectly capable, by myself, of learning about my own body and boundaries without anyone else there to muddy the waters. The immense pressure that was there in my teens/twenties to Have Sex Just Do It is basically gone. I’m vibing. I’ve got my routine by myself in bed that I enjoy, and that’s enough for me.

And in the unlikely event that I ever decide to have sex with someone in the future, I don’t feel at all like I’m lacking some essential Knowledge or Skill that would “make it good” for someone else. I fully expect to ask my partner out loud what they like and to receive an answer clearly communicated and to relax and have fun. And if it’s a disappointing experience, I’m fine with that too. It is what it is.

Sex is just not that big of a deal. I suspected it as a teen, and I’m more sure of it now. It’s fine to have it or not have it. It’s whatever.

[andwhatexcellentboiledpotatoes]

This is me when you "prev tags" me, btw

[pseudomantis]

Scientific fraud is the most baffling thing ever to me like do they think they're just going to make a huge breakthrough and no one will notice that it's fake by trying to replicate their results

[pseudomantis]

Yeah actually I just discovered how to turn plastic into gold. Oh you want to know how I did it

Starts running away cutely

[jonnywaistcoat]

[peri]

digital selfharm is real. do NOT check up on that ex-partner/ex-friend. do NOT reread those old messages/conversations that you know will hurt your feelings all over again or that will otherwise make you feel like shit. do NOT block evade to see if you’re being talked about. inhale. exhale. let it pass and you’ll be better for it.