Catnap Unicorn

Magical but also very sleepy | 30s | she/they | your local mom friend | Please sing my handle to the tune of the VH1 Pop Up Video jingle | header image by @lovely-oasis

[catnapunicorn]

[catnapunicorn]

Penis

Fresh outta those. We got spark plugs tho!

[curlsandstems]

Have you ever seen a violinist going APESHIT?!

Be sure to check out IAmDSharp!

[thegreynightsky]

GO OFFF

[babydollbucky]

Ok so I’ve been playing for 18 years and i’m a string teacher. Can i just say how IMPORTANT it is for young kids to see a BLACK, MALE-PRESENTING PERSON playing, nae, SHREDDING on a violin? I’ve know maybe 5 black people who played stringed instruments throughout my schooling and teaching (predumably because i’m an upper middle class white woman). In districts where the population is predominantly black, funding is always low, so the instruments are crappy. Kids quit, or the program is dismantled. I’ve seen very few professional string players who are black.

Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.

This person is the real deal. They were clearly classically trained, and seems to have some fiddle training as well. How cool is that?

[lil-tumbles]

But also… RAD PLAYING MY DUDEEEE

[ladyofspoons]

this is the coolest guy alive actually

[creepymutelilbugger]

I think this might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life that involves a violin

[blackwatersinkingship]

When I finish this whale shark lamp all 4 of you are gonna be So I'm pressed

[blackwatersinkingship]

She glows now, just so you know, and she's full of string deliciöusee string

[god-sent-gender-bent]

Are you gonna show us the lamp? 👀

[blackwatersinkingship]

Good news! Whäle shark lämp 🥰

[hollyevolving]

A lot more than 4 of us are impressed

[bidet-of-evil]

there are two wolves inside me. one wants to write and the other wants to nap. they’re both in a cage called My Job.

[the-owl-tree]

i'll always make fun of how stupid the "born evil baby" trope is but truly it is such a wretched trope i hope it dies forever

[the-owl-tree]

it's like the perfect package of "child you are allowed to harm" and "easy way to not interrogate how commonplace child abuse is". thank goodness this child was simply born wrong, we never have to examine the conditions they grew up in.

[disgruntledinametallicatshirt]

you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.

He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.

The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”

It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.

He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died.  He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.

Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough. 

You’re not Terry Pratchett. 

You are you.

And Terry would love that. 

[rsfcommonplace]

I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line.  I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern.  “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.

“Yes,” I said.  “But I like seeing how authors grow.”

He brightened and reached for his pen.  “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

I swear to fucking god. I would claw out OneDrive from my computer if I could. I would burn down their servers if I could. I would run down their stocks to the ground if I could. I hope every single one of their workers gets a better offer from a competitor in the next 24 hours. I hope every single one of their light bulbs explodes at the same time. I hope every single carton of milk in their fridge will always be expired.

Stop backing up my fucking files.

Stop asking me to back up my fucking files.

Stop taking my fucking files off my fucking computer.

I don't want a fucking reminder in three fucking days. Let me fucking say no.

Fuckers.

[prismatic-bell]

Friend, I have news you're gonna love. Here's a text tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 10.

Here's a text tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 10.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.

Go forth. Be free.

[ophilosoraptoro]

Reblog to save a life... and someone's sanity

[freakyolivelady]

computa make my mutuals have a great day

[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.

[apolladay]

Have you ever been to a celebrity's grave?

yes

no

Remaining time: 1 day 8 hours

Define celebrity however you'd like.

[apolladay]

Have you ever been to a celebrity's grave?

yes

no

Remaining time: 1 day 8 hours

Define celebrity however you'd like.

[butchselkie]

One thing about me is that I will always be a little in love with my friends’ OCs. I am normal and can be trusted with them I promise

[bigfatbitchdotcom]

Endlessly diabolical how you can't say words like rape and suicide uncensored without either being criticised by idiots or punished by conglomerates.

[bigfatbitchdotcom]

It's not r*pe, it's rape. It's not su*cide, it's suicide. Not unalive, dead. The backbone needs to be reintroduced en masse because softening the blow of these concepts with advertising language does absolutely nothing but allow people unaffected by them to feel not even a sting of what they can do, prompting inaction.

[bigfatbitchdotcom]

And it's been proven that on certain websites, you don't even face a repercussion for using the words as they are. People just started censoring themselves because they feared the potential lack of views and likes and followers which is so nasty itself.

[its-the-blob]

I attended an anti-suicide seminar in college. One of the big takeaways from it was that stigmatizing suicide increases the rate of suicide, because people who are feeling suicidal feel like they can't ask for help. Every time I see babytalk garbage like 'unalive', I think of that.

[ralfmaximus]

Use the real words. Words have power, and they matter.

[briannyssey]

Oh easy mistake. Yearning actually rises from the floor and longing hangs from the ceiling

[briannyssey]

🥺🥺

[goldensunset]

dude i love how chill and selfless you are 😄 by any chance is your wildest fantasy to be Useful?

[hollowboobtheory]

why do people think victorian orphans were like. the peak of sheltered pure innocence

[hollowboobtheory]

"imagine feeding mountain dew to a victorian orphan" they'd probably appreciate the pick-me-up before their shift as junior osha violator at the accident factory

[hollowboobtheory]

"imagine showing a victorian orphan vtubers" they'd say "this is boring i wanna watch public executions"

[burr-ell]

#that victorian orphan works as a chimblysweep to buy lifesaving medical cocaine and chloroform for his sister and yall dont even smoke weed

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶Y'all don't even smoke weed! Orphan trauma!🎵