Time and Affection and Pixels

Halloween-flavored leftist. This blog is low on spoilers and medium-high on cute animals and fandom. Mainly Nancy Drew games, Star Trek, Good Omens, Discworld, Mass Effect, Batman, and The Locked Tomb series.

[bruttanina]

Natalie Novak

[ozempicofficial]

[lycanshelby]

Starting a collection

[a-book-dragon]

You don't have a male or female brain – the more brains scientists study, the weaker the evidence for sex differences

Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.

rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

[liminalweirdo]

“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”

[mckitterick]

the notes on this are toxic - to help clear up any misunderstanding, here’s the actual science paper:

Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size

With the explosion of neuroimaging, differences between male and female brains have been exhaustively analyzed. Here we synthesize three dec

in short: brains are brains

[abortionado]

They’re calling me every slur under the sun over on twitter for this post

[cilceon]

Would you sell liquor to this baby

Yes

No

I don’t think life begins at contraception but I’d still sell liquor to baby

Voting ended onAug 6, 2025

Wait hold on rb canceled that’s the wrong word wait no stop

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[i-wear-the-cheese]

Hi OP! I have a friend who works in the heritage sector and thought you might find this useful. The place they work was having an exhibit on Experiences of a Certain Demographic Group in a Certain Period of History (vague to avoid doxxing) but instead of using human written copy from archival examples of real humans, the company they hired to build the exhibit used AI copy derived from archival examples.

What it did was make it impersonal, inaccurate, and unacademic. The voices and stories of the people weren't real so they didn't relate directly to the materials on exhibit, nor were they fictionally derived from a specifically curated amalgam and the experiences ended up a mismatch of class and racial norms for the time so a human copy editor had to fix it for a sum that far exceeded the original budget.

It cost them a lot of money but it also cost them audience attention and the "yes and" factor because stewards working the exhibit couldn't easily relate the work back to the artefacts they displayed (as the LLM had no ability to do this) and the public couldn't on their own initiative look up more about a person.

The friend in question is really pissed because the heritage sector is not all that well funded and he works for an organisation that is well known for its positive approach to rural life and natural preservation. And then the higher ups dumped more than he earns in a year into an initiative that funded environmentally disastrous data-centres, left skilled copy-writers out of a job, and alienated visitors. It was Bad.

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 4 days 14 hours

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

wake up babe new ao3 canonical tags are here

[garpen]

"you already left kudos here"

And??? Let me like it again??? Clearly it deserves more??

[queer-as-city-folk]

The fact the 2 colors removed from the rainbow flag were pink and teal, is kinda ironic given that those same colors can make a trans flag

[queer-as-city-folk]

This is a coincidence of course, given the colors were removed in the 80s and the trans flag was made in 1999

[cuddlef1sh]

the sex-magic trans flag

[tokkibean]

get a really good scene idea

write fic so that you can write the really good scene idea

write the really good scene idea

realise that you now need to write the rest of the fic

realise that you have no plot & no idea what to do bc you've already written the really good scene idea

panic.

[shibara]

7. realise you can just post the really good scene on its own.

8. slap some minimal context in the notes so ppl know what the fic that contained this might have been, and upload it to AO3.

9. the really good scene idea enters the collective mind of the fandom.

10. a person on the other side of the world falls asleep with a smile thinking about the really good scene idea

[the-haiku-bot]

7. realise

you can just post the really

good scene on its own.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[socialmaya]

Occasionally forget people genuinely think capitalism is thousands of years old

[sylestial]

One time I was talking about Robin Hood with some coworkers and one guy was like “he was bad because the people he helped learned to expect handouts” and I wanted to be like… okay can you explain how that flawed capitalist propaganda applies to feudalism

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

reminder that capitalism was literally invented in the 16th century

[tayefeth]

That’s an exaggeration. What was invented in the 16th century was mercantilism. Capitalism really dates for the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and cash crops over artisans and merchants. Vulture capitalism, with the notion that companies have no duties other than generating profit, is even younger.

[antique-scarecrow]

Capitalism is only 200 years old and I have to say, they have not been an impressive 200 years

[downtroddendeity]

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people don’t know the formal definition of capitalism. We all know the word, we’ve all seen the jokes, but very few people bother to actually define it unless they’re talking about political theory and philosophy, so it’s easy to end up with the impression that Capitalism = Money Can Be Exchanged For Goods And Services.

Capitalism is the economic system where most of the means of production (i.e. everything people need to have to make the stuff that everyone wants) are owned by private individuals or corporations, who then hire people to provide the labor necessary to produce things, with the intent of selling the output at a profit. It’s the difference between “you’re a carpenter and you make a chair and you sell it” and “you’re Richard Q. Richington who owns a chair factory, and you pay people to sell the chairs you paid other people to make and then all the excess money goes back to you.” There have been Richard Q. Richingtons on and off throughout history, but that being the norm for every single industry is a pretty recent development.

[antiterfbutch]

An alarming amount of people seem to think capitalism = all trade, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

[rockergiirl]

*test driving a car with the salesperson in the car with me* hey do you mind if i test the sound system with my music?

yeah sure go ahead

*connect my mp3 player*

*song starts and the vocals are clearly my voice*

i love crashing my car, crashing the car i'm driving is my favourite, the only thing i love more than crashing cars is crashing cars with other people in the car with me

[ur-favorite-fishgirl]

if you vote me for president i vow to make everything the ocean again. no more land only ocean. this will solve all of our problems and replace them with new, far more interesting problems

[ittybittymattycommittee]

#raise your shields #because you’re about to get wrecked

[jewishgarygreen]

#this is the star trek i wanna see#like when somebody asked gene roddenberry why piccard was bald#because wouldn’t they have found a cure for male pattern baldness by then?#and he was like ‘no by the 24th century no one will care’#i wanna see that attitude with disability and neurodiversity#it’s not that we’ll have a magic cure for everything#there’ll always be something new#but disabilities and neurodiversity will be celebrated and seen as part of the norm#it will be accomodated#so blind people can serve in star fleet#and so can people in wheelchairs and autistic people and people with prosthetics and people with chronic illnesses (via @hunterinabrowncoat)

[kiapet2]

This episode ends with Geordi saving the planet by using something derived from the technology found in his visor (an adaptive device that lets him sense things around him). So a disabled man literally saved the lives of an entire culture that wouldn’t have considered his life worth living, using technology they would have never deemed necessary without the presence of his unique needs.

[scholarlypidgeot]

I don’t watch Star Trek, but I can’t stress enough how important this message is

[fictionadventurer]

My favorite thing about this episode is that, while the rest of the characters are taking a more Star Trek philosophical approach to this situation, calmly debating the good and bad points of this colony built upon eugenics, Geordi is just seething. Troi is having a romance with their flippin’ president, but Geordi never hesitates on his morals. He’s always aware that this world’s supposed perfection is built upon the despicable philosophy of killing people like him. He barely even bothers to hide his anger as he has to work alongside their scientists. He’s snappish and short-tempered and bitter, clearly only working with these people because lives are at stake. When he discovers the solution is based on his VISOR, he is viciously triumphant, his joy at saving the people boosted by a bitter sense of righteousness that these people were only saved because someone like him was allowed to survive.

And even though this anger and bitterness are very un-Star-Trek-like approaches to diplomacy–it works. The scientist who works alongside him is the first person who decides to jump ship and leave the colony behind. She sees the stagnation of their bland “’‘‘‘‘utopia’‘‘‘‘‘ and realizes that diversity and adaptation create a much better society. And while the other Enterprise crew members have some wishy-washy lament over how this will destroy this planet’s ‘‘‘culture’‘‘, Geordi never waffles. He has far too personal a stake in this to lose sight of the fact that peoples’ lives are more important than any high-falutin’ philosophical justifications. The episode might waffle over the Prime Directive points of this society’s decline, but Geordi’s perspective is the one showing clearly why it needs to die.

[azaablue]

the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.

[sacred-portal]