Watermelon Central

So, I'm Jess. Crippling mobage addiction

[ceiye]

There's a 350+ seinen battle fighty fighty punch punch manga that I used to read but haven't picked back up for... 300 or so chapters. But for some reason, on a recent chapter, there were about 5x the number of comments on MD than they normally get. Turns out the MC got called an omega. Half the comments were like "MPREG TSUYOSHI TIME???" and the other half were dogging on the manosphere ABO and how they would greatly prefer omegaverse ABO over that garbage. So good on them, I did not expect that out of what I normally expect from audience of this sort of manga

[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.

[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]

[sodomit]

I was looking for photos of one physical condition that happens to penises and came across this photoset.

[tim-official]

my names christian baby. im the one from all the questions. I grew up now but I'm not Christian anymore. I tell people my names "Lyle" and Im a shift manager at a secondhand sports clothing store. honestly I want to leave all that business behind me

[orcboxer]

sorry about the time a baseball pitcher threw you at me and I hit you with a bat and scored a home run to a chorus of sinful cheers and holy boos. I thought you were a baseball... 😎 wrong emoji 🤑 wrong emoji 🦶 wrong emoji 👄 wrong emoji 😷 wrong emoji 🛀 wrong emoji 😖

[tim-official]

its cool man. water under the bridge

[tim-official]

you did what you had to do and I get that

[vinelark]

hmm my former landlords are trying to deduct a frankly off the rails amount of money from our security deposit…my time has come once again

[vinelark]

i was chatting with a coworker about this whole saga today and someone nearby popped into the convo to be like “you know, you can use chatgpt to write a demand letter!” and i sort of blinked and went, “okay. i did it myself, though.” and she was like, “yeah but it can tell you what laws and stuff are relevant” and i was like, “i also did research myself.” and she was very well-meaning but she said “chatgpt” like six more times before she left and it was genuinely baffling to me, this insistence on it.

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.

(we got the money back, by the way 💪)

[chantylay]

Please never use generative AI tools for any kind of legal dispute. It does not know what laws or court cases are. It will make up something that sounds favorable to you, and you will get crushed. There are free resources out there to learn this stuff. And sometimes attorneys will offer free consultations or volunteer at a free legal clinic. OP didn't just do it themselves to do extra work or some shit. This is really the only viable way to do things short of hiring a professional to do it for you.

ChatGPT is not easier or faster in matters like this. It is a shot to the foot.

[captainhaterade]

BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service

The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed.

“More than fifty research and development facilities across thirty-one states. Gone. Consolidated into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. And ‘consolidated’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because what it actually means is that decades of place-based, long-term ecological research—the kind that literally cannot exist anywhere else because it depends on specific forests, specific watersheds, specific ecosystems studied over generations—will be snuffed out.

You cannot move a thirty-year watershed study. You cannot relocate a decades-long old-growth monitoring program. You cannot box up a forest and ship it to Colorado. When these facilities close, the experiments die. The datasets end. The partnerships with universities that took generations to build collapse. And the institutional knowledge of the scientists who ran those programs walks out the door, because the administration damn well knows most of them won’t follow a forced relocation to a single consolidated office that has nothing to do with the ecosystems they’ve spent their careers studying.”

[arianaderalte]

The U.S. Forest Service, Dismantled

Nine regional offices. 57 research labs. 193 million acres. An interactive map of what was lost.

[aetherograph]

Call your senators. Both of them. Tell them the Forest Service reorganization is proceeding without the congressional approval required by Section 716 of the Agriculture Appropriations Act and Section 421 of the Interior Appropriations Act. Use those numbers. Say them out loud. Staffers write down what they don’t recognize, and these are the provisions their bosses voted for.

If your senator is a Republican, the question is simple: you voted for a law that requires USDA to get committee approval before reorganizing or relocating any office. USDA didn’t get that approval. Their own lawyers declared your law unconstitutional. What are you going to do about it?

If your senator is a Democrat, the question is just as simple: the legal basis for stopping this already exists. Where are the subpoenas? Where are the hearings? Why is USDA’s general counsel allowed to declare a duly enacted law unconstitutional by internal memo and face no consequences?

Make them answer. Make their staff write it down. Call back next week and ask what happened.

(source)

5 Calls

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[amygdalae]

we're having sex and you pull out at the end to discover your cock is entirely gone, dissolved (ive digested it like a pitcher plant). bye!

[amygdalae]

You'd unfollow me for my pitcher plant pussy post? After the beautiful night we shared???

[toonlink1210]

WASNT A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT. PESIS IS GONE.

[littlefingies]

Sorry for us politics posting, but we have until May 22, 2026 to submit public comment to the FCC:

More info from GLAAD:

https://glaad.org/fcc/

They have some good tips about writing a comment and protecting your privacy which, fuck it, I'll just paste here:

Providing an email address is optional. If you have concerns about privacy, you may use your initials or public address in your local area, such as City Hall. Do not use a joke name. It diminishes the comment’s credibility.

Your submission does not need to be long. A single, well-reasoned paragraph is sufficient.

Do not copy/paste a template comment. The FCC values unique perspectives, and an original comment carries significantly more weight in the public record. You can explain why this matters to you without revealing private or sensitive personal information.

Here's what I said:

“Free speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.”

Here's the link to submit your comment by May 22:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express?proceeding%5Bname%5D=19-41

[ceiye]

Rereading Beelzebub. I know it's been like a decade since I last read it but man there sure is. A whole lot of stuff I just did not remember having happened. Completely forgot that Beel had an older brother to begin with, and that the demon squad were his subordinates

[ceiye]

Damn the Furuichi Development arc is earlier than I remember too. Good, he was starting to actually be Creepichi, hope this resets him to back not being Creepichi

[ceiye]

I could have sworn that them going back to Ishiyama and the demon crest stuff happened way before the end of the series, but there's only 50 chapters left??? It all happened over the course of a year???

[ceiye]

It's really too bad the signs of ending were there, because we really could have sat on the characters and concepts the last two arcs introduced for longer. Like, the Touhoushinki were also defeated in as quick a time, but we got to hang out with them longer before they became Oga's allies. Also, Furuichi's ability to contract multiple demons would have been really cool to get more than A SINGLE PANEL TO REVEAL. Also Hilda was barely even around for the last 50 chapters? Considering it's Jump, I guess having half a year to finish off is better than the two weeks a series on the chopping block gets now.

Anyways finishing thoughts

The homophobia and transphobia is. Not good. There's the basic "gags" towards the gay and trans bit characters, and unfortunately that was way too common in Jump to even comment on. I remember Himekawa having a fiance that was raised as a man, and if that were it, then like yeah it sucks being raised a gender that does not align with who you are. But I did not remember that his fiance actually enjoyed being a man "despite" """loving him as a woman""" and they still had the message of "if you love Himekawa like a woman, come to him as a woman." Like come on dude you couldn't have just let him love you as a man and give a different reason to reject him? He has a very small cameo in a dress in the final chapter with Himekawa and like come on man.

I can't tell whether it was cause I read weekly, because I was younger, or because it was a Prince of Tennis type deal where they put way more character interactions and screen time in the anime, but I remember them trying to push Kanzaki/Paako and Furuichi/Nene more, but nah it was literally only brought up during and after the Christmas arc. I think I only watched the anime original episodes way back when so like I don't even remember what went on with that anymore. I remember a big Ogafuru shipper actually got to work on the anime, and that a lightly Ogafuru fanart they had became official anime art so good for them. I don't know if they nuked themselves off the internet as these JP artists tend to do but I don't think I can find the original anymore

Speaking of Ogafuru, as much as I love the ship, I love it in a very specific way even more. That being "Oga loves Furuichi but only has the capacity to recognize one emotion at a time. One day he will have an epiphany but it will be quickly overriden by how much more he loves his fist in his face. Furuichi is homophobic*." Like, it was a joke but Beel's second word was friggin Furuchin. How much did Oga talk about him while they were apart??? They're going to be single together until they're dead.

I kind of miss Tamura putting an Ogaface and a Furuichiface into his manga, but it would be harder to get away with since he's in a different magazine now. Glad Cosmos is doing well. Amazing what you could do without Jump's influences. I get like, lightly conservative vibes from Tamura's manga but not really outright so I'm not going to accuse it of anything more than your typical shounen/seinen conservativism. Cosmos is going towards a more battle heavy route now which like I'm concerned about but they aren't in Jump so hopefully they don't go too far

*I guess in a Static Shock's Best Friend kind of way so like you know maybe if he got over it.

[ceiye]

Rereading Beelzebub. I know it's been like a decade since I last read it but man there sure is. A whole lot of stuff I just did not remember having happened. Completely forgot that Beel had an older brother to begin with, and that the demon squad were his subordinates

[ceiye]

Damn the Furuichi Development arc is earlier than I remember too. Good, he was starting to actually be Creepichi, hope this resets him to back not being Creepichi

[ceiye]

I could have sworn that them going back to Ishiyama and the demon crest stuff happened way before the end of the series, but there's only 50 chapters left??? It all happened over the course of a year???

[ceiye]

Rereading Beelzebub. I know it's been like a decade since I last read it but man there sure is. A whole lot of stuff I just did not remember having happened. Completely forgot that Beel had an older brother to begin with, and that the demon squad were his subordinates

[ceiye]

Damn the Furuichi Development arc is earlier than I remember too. Good, he was starting to actually be Creepichi, hope this resets him to back not being Creepichi

[ceiye]

Rereading Beelzebub. I know it's been like a decade since I last read it but man there sure is. A whole lot of stuff I just did not remember having happened. Completely forgot that Beel had an older brother to begin with, and that the demon squad were his subordinates

[pangur-and-grim]

I'm so so so angry. in Horsey Game, I found a wild legless horse, cloned it repeatedly, and mass-sold the clones to all my rival ranches to pollute their gene pools. and when my plan finally reached fruition.....when at last, I came into a race where every opponent had no legs.......my stupid fucking horse fell over.

[pangur-and-grim]

[enki2]

[liirker-at-thresholds]

I really like how the scientology speedrunning trend is developing, in this clip we see that the participants are

Not deterred by the closed door

Working as a group

Protecting their identities

Inflicting material costs to the institution via property destruction

Getting away at the end

These ideas were not all here from the beginning. They are genuinely gaining experience that can be applied elsewhere