just talking to myself

This is my personal blog, it's mostly reblogs. I am shit at tagging stuff but I don't use alternate spellings of anything or censor myself really.

[vengefullamb]

antique brooches via regal68 on ebay

[mademoiseli]

The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.

[atonau]

THE NOTES ARE BROKEN!  This has been reblogged so many times, Tumblr just shrugged and said “infinity”

[marlinspirkhall]

Sigh. Yeah, sure, okay.

[dduane]

Yep. …Here’s the link to the article about this in the Indo:

Explosive diarrhoea infection spreads to UK as officials issue holiday warning

Cylosporiasis infections lead to nasty but non-life-threatening symptoms, such as ‘explosive diarrhoea’

The UK people suffering from this are mostly ones who’ve just returned from holidays in Mexico, where they caught it via poor food or water hygiene.

This is not a disease that can be passed from person to person. You have to come into direct contact with food or water (or, okay, bodily fluids/feces) contaminated with the parasite.

…Here’s the Beeb website’s article as well.

UK warned about 'explosive diarrhoea' cyclospora infection

The UK is seeing a sharp rise in cases - 67 since April - with many of them among travellers returning from Mexico.

And finally: here’s the NHS’s page about it.

Cyclospora

Find out about cyclospora, including how you get it, where it's found and what the symptoms are.

[noknowshame]

clearly some of you have not been to the labyrinth of pestilence deep beneath kentucky

[noknowshame]

alright so when I was a teenager I went to this bug-themed summer camp for socially stunted nerds and on the way back from it I visited the university of kentucky. I met with an entomologist there and while we were touring the department he asked "wanna see something cool?" so he took me down an elevator to what must've been a sub-sub-sub basement on a card-access only floor, and after turning several more corners we went through two sets of (I'm not even exaggerating) 12-inch thick doors, opening onto one long as fuck corridor. each side of this hallway was lined with about 50 refrigerators. and each and every single one of these refrigerators was filled with hundreds of thousands. of live. bedbugs. the very reasonable explanation for this was that they were doing research on insecticides and needed to test them on real samples, but they could not under any circumstances allow them to escape, so they had to be kept under area 51 levels of overkill containment. but reasonable or not that was very much not what I anticipated seeing that day. so yeah. I decided after that I did not want to become an entomologist

[curlicuecal]

absolutely baffled to get to the end of that story and hear you decide NOT to be an entomologist but possibly that's the entomologist in me speaking

[noknowshame]

as this breaches containment it is vital to me that The People know my problem with the bedbug labyrinth was NOT the bedbugs. that was obviously sick as fuck. the problem was it dawning on me how much entomology research is anti-bug instead of pro bug. weird girl equivalent of realizing how much time veterinarians spend putting down dogs

[dubiousculturalartifact]

The new Odyssey adaptation has inevitably gotten people talking about a Muppet version of it, and they’re frequently suggesting Kermit as Odysseus, Miss Piggy as Penelope.

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

It ain’t Kermit

[anyroads]

Miss Piggy tied to the mast while Statler and Waldorf heckle her from the sea

[merlinmumbles]

Okay but who's the one human actor playing?

[literary-potato]

I vote Nobody, but I could see arguments for Helen of Troy or Circe as well.

Also important:

How does the Circe turning men into pigs thing get handled given that Miss Piggy is a pig-Muppet and there are multiple other muppets who are already canonically pig-Muppets?

They get turned into real live action pigs, nobody remarks on it

They get turned into real live action pigs & Piggy looks directly at the camera

They get turned into chickens

They get turned into live action humans

Nothing happens at first to the guy Muppet-pig, so Circe has to get creative

Other/I’m bald/vanilla extract

Voting ended onJul 30

Just to clarify my vision on a couple of these:

* by chickens I mean Muppet-chickens à la Camilla (Gonzo naturally would have some reaction to this)

* in the “nothing happens at first to muppet pig”, what I’m visualizing is that Cpt James Pork (or whatever his name is - the pigs in space one) is in the crew, everyone else in the crew gets transformed into either live action pigs or non-sentient Muppet-pigs (walking on 4 legs, etc), and he is completely unchanged… until Circe sighs and snaps her fingers again, and he turns into some other animal (maybe a chicken? or possibly a live action human, in which case it’s obviously either an INSANE celebrity cameo pull with someone who’s normally top billing, or literally William Shatner)

[literary-potato]

Can I just say I really appreciate that our collective commitment to the Muppets is so strong that at 120-something votes, not one person has chosen other/vanilla extract?

[gardengarlic]

Every time this crosses my dash there's a different string of comments and they are all gold so I'm consolidating.

[amuseoffyre]

Circe - only human in the film, played by Anne Hathaway! - turning the pig muppet crew into humans and Miss Piggy gasping "You monster!"

[things-from-strings]

🕸BEHOLD MY BOY!!!🕸

after who knows how many months of puzzling out the geometry, running out of the right colors, & feeling like i'd NEVER be done making flower motifs, HERE HE IS!! in all his orange glory!!

the cutest, sweetest, most huggable spider in the WORLD!!! ✨️💖🕷💖✨️

his name is Arson 🔥🥰🔥

[the-cassquatch]

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

[dj-of-the-coven]

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

[xerxestexastoast]

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

[biothreads]

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry

[headspace-hotel]

try Radiogarden

[rosiewitchescottage]

And it's amazing that you can find information that you looked for, just in the off chance, never expect ing that it would really be there.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

Online Etymology Dictionary

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of Eng

Explore live radio by rotating the globe

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

Thank you @headspace-hotel

[mortalityplays]

I highly recommend developing a tolerance for polite low level conflict, not just because it will serve you well when employers or whoever try to impose bullshit on you with the expectation you'll fold rather than expend energy arguing, but because it will make you a genuine asset to your friends and allies whenever they're in positions where they're less able to fight for themselves.

the first and most important step is learning to stay calm when someone with authority tries to pressure you. take a breath, think about what you actually believe, and respond in your own time. if they try to brush past or talk over you, you can say "excuse me, can I think about that for a moment. I'd like to give you a proper answer." self esteem. you're both just upright monkeys.

[teaboot]

I think that if you lose an arm and get fitted for a prosthetic u should get to refer to your prosthetist as your arms dealer

[teaboot]

And if it's a leg you can call them your footman like you're tge queen of france

[sighinastorm]

Go to a furry convention dressed as an 18th century fur trapper. Longrifle, jawtraps, chains, fur hat, big coat made of sewn-together pelts of different polyester neons...

[chacha-tortuga]

[sighinastorm]

Man. You get it. :^)

[40ouncesandamule]

How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me

A simple error got magnified by Flock's nationwide surveillance camera network and ended with four cop cars boxing me in.

Oh hey! Look! It's that thing everyone on the left said was going to happen happening!

[withbriefthanksgiving]

“The plates on this car are stolen,” Officer Ganshyn said. My face must’ve twisted in disbelief because he continued, saying they weren’t sure whether the car itself or just the plates were stolen. This made absolutely no sense. Car companies keep meticulous track of the fleets they loan out to the media. The vehicles all have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time one enters or exits. The officers eventually ran the Range Rover’s VIN, and it came back clean, but in their view, the plates were definitely stolen.

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

[…]

One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

[…]

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

8 July 2026

[sandersstudies]

We were doing an activity where the kids got to make a playbill for a musical about themselves and all the other kids were like “character list: mommy, daddy, me, my brother, my best friend” “scenes: I get a puppy, first day of school, my baby sister is born”

But one little girl was like “oh, it’s a musical about ME you say” and the character list was all the other girls in the class cast as her body parts, and a story about how her body works.

“Kaylee is nice so she will be the heart. Lily is my kidneys. Sapphire is the lungs.”

She surreptitiously showed me that the girl who kept taking the crayons she was using was cast specifically as “left buttcheek” and I had to pretend like that wasn’t the funniest thing I’d ever seen.

[tpwrtrmnky]

The AI bubble bursting will mean that every product currently propped up by the tech industry doing circular self-investments has to be supplanted by an alternative that actually makes more money than it costs to run, or disappear with no replacement.

That doesn't mean literally every application of machine learning or language models goes away forever, because machine learning and generative models existed before Silicon Valley decided they were the infinite money algorithm, and will still be around after they stop thinking that. "Generate ten videos of cat people working in the baby mines for free" or "have the chatbot generate a summary every time I google" are not sticking around.

Roughly ten years from now, we'll have completely different approaches to using machine learning-based software, based on the applications of these algorithms that actually make sense given the resources used. They'll likely look a lot like the applications of machine learning that already existed before OpenAI, because those were motivated by finding places where these models were useful first, then developing the models afterwards.

The smuggest asshole alive will act like Sam Altman was vindicated in the end, but he will not have built Computer God, he will have been the figurehead of one of the worst investment bubbles in US history.

[tpwrtrmnky]

You have to separate the tech from the Silicon Valley hype ecosystem, is the thing. They've been betting on new iterations of "buy up ridiculous numbers of GPUs and then run an Infinite Money Algorithm on them" for the entire 20s so far.

The last few were promising to replace money and turn all video games into investment opportunities by putting all your in-game items on the blockchain. This one is making even more ludicrous promises like replace all human intellectual labor because they happened to land on an algorithm that vaguely resembles something scientists have gotten results out of.

[roofon]

The dot com bubble bursting didn’t mean people stopped making websites for things. It just meant people didn’t start investing in you just because you were making a website.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Yeah and like there was an internet both before and after the bubble, but extremely era-specific behaviors like "we're rebranding our corporation to [name].com, give us money" didn't make it out of there alive.

[slipping-into-madness]

[thaumbody]

Here's a source for the analysis, but it probably is not the source.

Labor share of income hits record low as corporate profits soar

Workers’ share of US economic output has fallen to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data th

Some points of interest:

Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.

The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.

In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households hold 31.7 percent of all wealth. The bottom half hold barely 2.5 percent.

[gemville]

Platinum, Diamond and Pearl Tassel Necklace, Circa 1920

This vintage necklace includes 4.25 ctw of marquise, baguette and Old European-cut diamonds

Sotheby’s

[theweight]

this orange was pregnant. Isn’t the world amazing

[thefaultinourchickennuggets]

Hi im a librarian amd that's not now this works. If a library allows you to have a digital card and not live in the area, you are NOT taking away resources from other people, that's not how anything works. Please keep doing it!!! The more people that use our services, the more money we can get from funding sources!!! Please use us!!! We are not utilized enough, by people in or out of our community. Thanks.