Omnomnom @cookieofdoom - Tumblr Blog

By the way! I just encountered a perfect example of why you should always, always seek context for stuff and get your information from knowledgeable sources.

So the gas station by my work has a sign in the window saying there's no midgrade or premium gas right now, only 87/regular.

MY FIRST THOUGHT: fuck. It's Iran. I read that article about oil shortages. It begins. Fuck.

MY SECOND THOUGHT: remember when there wasn't actually a toilet paper shortage, but people created one by deciding there was one? What if people have bought extra because of Iran, and their delivery schedule just hasn't caught up?

MY RESPONSE: I asked the clerk what was up.

THE TRUTH: they've got a leak and the easiest way to deal with the problem was to shut off premium until the repair people can come. They'll be back up and running in a day or two.

You're gonna notice the real answer isn't very exciting. They need to do a bit of maintenance, big deal. But can you imagine the panic I could have started by reporting my initial reaction as fact?

....now realize TikTokkers and other influencers are incentivized to do that on purpose.

ich-bin-jude

"You're gonna notice the real answer isn't very exciting."

Oh, yeah. Social media sensationalizes everything to try to generate moral outrage, since outrage tends to push people to give more clicks, comments, shares, and engagement, when the reality to most things is pretty boring.

I remember this one meme ten years ago, how this one city asked residents to dim their Christmas lights.

One click-baity title made it seem like they did to "be respectful to other religions that don't celebrate Christmas," and the article got millions of views and cycled through so many "War on Christmas!" pundits.

The real reason turned out to be all those Christmas lights being on 24/7 (plus people being inside more often with the lights and heat on, since it was winter) was a bit of a strain on the city's power grid, and they just asked residents to turn off their outdoor Christmas lights when they went to sleep at night, same was when they turned off their indoor lights when they went to bed.

The real reason was incredibly mundane, boring, and reasonable, but that didn't get as much engagement as a fictious "attack on your religious freedoms!"

Ask why something is the way it is, and 9/10 it's a very mundane and boring reason.

derinthescarletpescatarian

This phrase has already entered my vocabulary re: media criticism where like. The viewer has a concrete view of what they expect a story to be based on the tropes and cliches they're used to seeing together, and when that doesn't happen, they judge it as a failed depiction of what they assumed it was going to be instead of judging it as what it actually is.

"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?

"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?

"This feels like it's missing a conclusion! Like, the protagonist does bad stuff and because of a critical decision he makes as a result of his major character flaws, meets tragedy in the end! Where's the part where he learns better and brings is love back from the dead and becomes a good guy and gets a happy ending?": When does he steal the fucking bread??

thetetra

I heard this out as "When criticizing something, you must judge it for what it is, not what it isn't"

derinthescarletpescatarian

#this is why so many of us urge people to get a wider diet of stories

fleshdyk3

i haaate when ppl are talking abt mammal colouration and they bring up mandrills but not vervet monkeys.... fake fans

fleshdyk3

put some respect on his name

ihnmaims

somethingfangirly

Literal blue balls

phantomrose96

Concept I've been stewing on for a while here. I've got a name for it now and I'm calling it the Shot Dog Factor. It's a numerical value, assignable to any internet post, which represents the average number of engagements it needs to reach before someone comes along acting like this post shot their dog.

And for the sake of High Number = More Danger, which feels like the intuitive and sensible read, let's call it the inverse. As in the chance that any given interaction results in a Shot Dog response.

"Hee hee haa haa" type of silly shitpost? Low Shot Dog Factor. Largely safe. A genuine political opinion? Critically high Shot Dog Factor. Guaranteed to elicit such a response if it breaks containment.

As a result of this phenomenon, you see phrasings and circumventions added specifically to lower the Shot Dog factor. Every "now I know this doesn't apply to EVERYONE'S specific situation, but I just think--" about something where the non-specificity was obvious, but OP needed to add that disclaimer to avoid the Shot Dog from someone who thinks it needs to apply to them.

And another--perhaps the most--critical thing to understand about the Shot Dog factor is that 0 is not a valid value. There's a discontinuation at 0. And as such, the Shot Dog limit, as engagement goes to infinity is, in fact, 100%. Any and every post you have ever made, given enough containment breaching, WILL piss someone off in wild ways. You can lower the Shot Dog factor but it is never 0. Sometimes when a post of yours escapes containment, you must simply sit back and accept this reality.

phantomrose96

#op the fact that you called it this. has skyrocketed the shot dog factor for this one astronomically. im so sorry (via @mecharose)

Thank you yeah no that was part of the vision

whumpster-fire

How dare you accuse us of shooting dogs

cannibalchicken

icedoatmilkmatcha-deactivated20

also

yeahokayillreblogthat

Yeah okay Ill reblog that!

aggressivelybicaptainamerica

Not a scholar at first, but the guy who wrote Jaws hated that people used it to justify hating sharks so much he dedicated the rest of his life to shark research and advocacy.

ruffboi-mags

The woman who popularized gender reveals wishes she hadn't, afaik.

fall1ngfeather

(afaik- the woman who popularized gender reveals did so because she had a long history of miscarriages. The reveal was a celebration of the fact that one of her pregnancies had gotten far enough that there WAS a physical sex to reveal. It was never intended to be like... *gestures at modern gender reveals* all that. That same kid later came out as trans and yes, the family had a second gender reveal for that lol.)

p00pym00py

This whole thread is so beautiful to me that I can explain it

my-random-fandoms

pouncequick

The man who invented the K-Cup coffee pod almost 20 years ago says he regrets doing so and can't understand the popularity of the products t

jackironsides

L. David Mech, who popularised the idea that there were 'alpha' and 'beta' wolves in his 1970 book The Wolf, has spent the rest of his career trying to debunk this. (The original studies were done on captive wolves, and thus didn't simulate an accurate model of wolf pack dynamics.)

The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs a

In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.

“What would be the value of calling a human father the alpha male?” says L. David Mech, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied wolf packs in the wild for decades. “He’s just the father of the family. And that’s exactly the way it is with wolves.”

targetedknowledge

bumblebeebats

The crazy thing is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you asked me on any given day "Would like to see a picture of some genitals?" my answer would be "😰 No, that's... No, thank you. I'm okay, actually." I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who do engage with the penis side of the internet, but personally, I've spent the better part of two decades doing all I can NOT to have pictures of dick and balls or sexy bikini babe buttcheeks blasted onto my retinas constantly. And yet... to be denied the penis? To have a jumped up pile of javascript tell me, a grown adult with an air fryer and an outstanding council tax bill, that I cannot be trusted to withstand the sight of a bare nipple unless I let it scan my drivers' license? I will move heaven and earth to see that fucking nipple, friend. I will walk a thousand miles barefoot on hot coals before I give you big brother bitches my passport number. A thousand miles through the desert with five VPNs just to press my face up against the glass and see the last uncensored picture of two My Little Pony Characters sixty-nining each other, and I don't even want! to look at it! But I will! I must! for the sake of our fucking democracy!

elodieunderglass

I’m glad to remind you!

queer-as-city-folk

Animals: a guide

queer-as-city-folk

One side has monkeys and tigers and elephants and capybaras, the other? Squirrels and deer

queer-as-city-folk

I forgot Bison and Sea Otters

salekinj

Have you seen a moose, megafauna are cool.

queer-as-city-folk

I DO NOT!!!

queer-as-city-folk

I am sorry

what-even-is-thiss

Religion in fantasy worlds: Everyone believes the exact same things about Green Nature Goddess and has official rituals for her that are the same everywhere

Religion irl: Technically it’s heresy for me to worship this skeleton but my spiritual advisor said that it’s legit so I’m gonna keep giving it offerings of yogurt

what-even-is-thiss

Religion in fantasy worlds: We’ve gotta pour water over this statue or else the god will get angry

Religion irl: We’ve gotta pour water over this statue? Why? Idk man that’s just what you do. Just do it alright.

what-even-is-thiss

Religion in fantasy worlds: These are the rules. The rules are law. Nobody can break the rules.

Religion irl: Okay you say that there are “rules” but how exactly are we defining “rules” here? Like is a suggestion a rule? How are we defining suggestion? No come back. Listen. Are we going by nuance in the original language or are translations fine or-

what-even-is-thiss

High control religions/cults recruiting in fantasy worlds: Join us! For we shall all eat the moon! This is a legitimate position to have!

High control religions/cults recruiting irl: We have free snacks. That shirt looks sooo cute on you btw. What, you heard that we wanna eat the moon? The media is always telling lies about us you know. We may have some unorthodox opinions about the moon but, tell you what. Come get some snacks, make some new friends, maybe chat about the moon a bit. See what you think. We’ve got pizza.

what-even-is-thiss

Religions in fantasy worlds: We must make a sacrifice to appease the gods! *draws up a sacrifice circle and completely destroys the sacrifice*

Religions irl: We must make a sacrifice to appease the gods! *has a communal barbecue*

dancinbutterfly

you can say Christianity if you mean Christianity

what-even-is-thiss

No I don’t actually. You’ll notice that I referenced sacrifice here. Christianity doesn’t generally practice sacrifice.

In order my inspirations were things I’ve seen that Catholics, Buddhists, Jews, Scientologists, and many traditional local religions do that are referenced in research that I’ve done or people who practice those religions in the modern day have actually told me about something that they or their families do personally.

In fact I have Hmong friends whose families still do animal sacrifice for their own personal traditions. They sacrifice chickens, spill the blood in a specific way, and eat the animal afterwards.

As a Christian myself I’ll remind you that religion does not automatically equal Christianity. And in fact that sort of assumption is sort of what annoys me about fantasy religions. I have my faith but I also have an interest in world religions in general and human spirituality in fantasy media is often just completely flattened out to being a misunderstanding of Christianity or a satanic panic view of satanism sloppily copy pasted over a misunderstanding of how paganism or spiritualism works.

prismatic-bell

Also re: the water statue one:

"How did this tradition get started? I'll tell you: .......I don't know. But it's a tradition." --Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof, aka an extremely not-Christian story

thehmn

In Copenhagen you can visit The Round Tower. It used to be an astronomical observatory until light pollution and the vibrations from increased traffic in the streets made it useless for its original purpose.

Today it’s mostly famous for what it looks like on the inside.

It has an equestrian staircase though it’s so smooth it’s really just a gentle slope more than a staircase. It was build like that so our lazy bum king could ride his horse all the way to the top (king not in photo)

And naturally people have also driven cars up the tower

And held a bike race

For a while it was just sort of abandoned by the authorities and became a spiraling marketplace

But today it has been restored and become a tourist spot as well as a popular destination for school trips. And yes, you can still watch the cosmos at the top.

snowkissedmonsters

Also on age verification: I have been on this website since 2011. Unless you think I started blogging at age 2, you KNOW I'm an adult.

dreamerinsilico

#the fact that 'can prove access to an online account at least 12 years old' or even 'account to be verified is itself fully 18 years old'#AREN'T accepted methods of age verification is such a telling sign of what the real purpose of age-gating laws is:#data harvesting and deanonymization and the buildout of state-controllable ways to restrict both content and internet access itself en masse (via @shinelikethunder )

⬆️

cookieofdoom

Yeah... this account is like 16 years old. 😩

kaputtsolvi

What I feel people frequently forget about autistic special interests is that they aren't always information based. They may simply be visual or mental

Someone may have a special interest in a show, but instead of that meaning that they will talk about that show often, it may mean they watch that show extremely frequently.

Special interests are ways of regulating, not simply encyclopedias we have in our heads. Sometimes it's watching something frequently. Maybe only listening to one genre of music, maybe it's a collection, maybe it's an action. I'm tired of it only being seen as autistic people's personal encyclopedias

mandatalks

I just had the best encounter with a child at Kmart. I was in the aisle shopping, and this girl and her dad come around the corner. The girl sees me and excitedly exclaims “There’s a human here!!” to which the father replied “Yes, there’s humans everywhere.”

mandatalks

It has officially been one year since I met aliens at Kmart and the Kmart in question no longer exists.

karimitic

The Aliens took the K-Mart back home with them?

holeodemony

THAT WAS MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Literally me!!! Little girl!!! That was me!!! (I’m a guy now but that was me!!!)

Okay for context, long story short,

Our family is really weird. Really weird. We’re not aliens (at least not that I know of although it’d explain some things) and yet I was a weird kid. Normal autistim child. Mom says that I called everyone ‘humans’ which is really funny — shes always told me that humans are humans, and yet you dont have to be human to be a people (example: cats, bunnies, dogs, et cetera — not human, but still people). Aka mom never corrected me because i was right. Of course she also calls humans humans because we are. I still call people humans but yes. Back to story. Went off topic there.

A long while back, like maybe five years ago, I asked mom if I’m anywhere on the Internet, because given how weird our family is, that wouldn’t be surprising.

She replied that yes, she believes so, because she found a tumblr post that happened earlier that day mentioning an alien encounter in K mart. This exact post.

When she saw it, she was really confused, because wait. My child. With my husband (who transitioned a few years back so is now my other mom!!!). Earlier today. At K mart.

She checked with mom and yes, that interaction did happen, they laughed about it and went about their day. When she told me about this a few years back, she didn’t remember what store, only that it doesn’t exist.

Finally, it recently circulated in conversation again, and since mom remembered the name I have found the post!!!

TLDR; I’m the alien, and hi :) we’re doing fine

shiftshapeing

middle-eastern-queen

The Met Gala is literally our version of the Hunger Games. The elite play dress up while them and their elite circle of rich friends with powerful connections blow up children overseas.

brehaaorgana

The met gala singlehandedly funds the nonprofit Costume Institute within the Met Museum for the entire year. The costume institute has to fund itself and does not get funding from the rest of the met.

The money raised by the gala goes towards a collection that spans over 33,000 objects and seven centuries.

It is actually nothing like the hunger games because no one is fighting each other to the death at the gala, and also because it's a massive charity fundraiser for the preservation of history.

captain-acab

Fellas is it a fascist dystopia for *checks notes* wealthy people do philanthropy to fund a history museum and showcase contemporary art?

klfg

[source]

klfg

🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?

artschoolglasses

Fashion + Art

Looks from the Met Gala 2026 red carpet and the art that inspired them...

Ciara + Nefertiti Bust

Sam Smith + Erté

Cardi B + Hans Bellmer

Angela Bassett + Laura Wheeler Waring

Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo + Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory)

Claire Foy + John Singer Sargent

Luke Evans + Tom of Finland

Rachel Zegler + Paul Delaroche

Alexi Ashe + Yves Klein

Amy Sherald + Amy Sherald

thoodleoo

there are a lot of really good ancient roman laws but i think my favorite is that, if you got struck by lightening and died, you couldnt have a proper burial because it meant that the gods hated you

ancient-rome-au

“Jupiter cancelled him and we’re not going to question that”

antique-scarecrow

genuinely asking: how would these laws apply to that guy who got struck by lightning on seven separate occasions but survived every time?

nanarchy

I think I would have assumed Zeus was trying to fuck him.

antique-scarecrow

worst possible response thanks so much

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