this is fine

A little bit of everything

[galileosballs]

So, if you're not in a techbro-adjacent world you might not know this, but a lot of gamer bros have finally started rebelling against AI. Because they were all waiting for Black Friday sales to get new PC parts, but AI companies are buying up all the PC parts, so they all logged in on Black Friday looking for deals and found everything three times as expensive as it was a few months ago. And I mean everything. It's not just GPUs this time like it was with the crypto miners, it's RAM and SSDs and even fucking HDDs.

You tell a gamer bro he can't get a 1TB SSD for less than 200 smackeroos and he'll be against anything you tell him is to blame.

[galileosballs]

There's also a large migration of gamers to Linux, which came as a surprise to me when I first learned it because the conventional wisdom for so long had been that you can't game on Linux at all. The release of the Steam Deck changed that narrative overnight, since it runs on a custom Linux distro that Valve made because they don't want to deal with Microsoft's bullshit either. The vast majority of PC games now run just fine on Linux, and the only ones that don't are ones that use a specific form of anti-cheat software (mostly online competetive games, like League of Legends). Even that will probably change in the future, since the migration to Linux will incentivize game companies to do their anti-cheat differently.

Most of the Linux distros that people are moving to have no AI features and no intention of including them. And, of course, even if some develop them in the future, the Linux community can always be counted upon to provide a no-AI alternative. They are extremely protective of their disc space, after all. So there is a real coalition building here, in a population that has a lot of cash to use to lean on the powers that be. I think we have some reason to be optimistic.

[ghiblicentral]

KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE 1989 | dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN | "DIVINE" MV

[fladurblegon]

“What if poor people abuse the system?”

The system intrinsically abuses poor people.

Hope this helps.

[sandersstudies]

I think a great way to improve communication with kids (and adults) is to make every yes or no question a this or that question.

I started doing it when after brain surgery my husband had trouble forming responses to questions for a while, and realized that the habit was helping my students engage more truthfully with me.

Some examples:

Yes/No: “Did you clean up your room like I told you?”

This/That: “Did you clean up already, or do you still need to do that?”

Yes/No: “Are you going to sit quietly?”

This/That: “Are you ready to sit and do our quiet activity, or do you need some time by yourself first?”

Yes/No: “Are you doing anything fun for your birthday?”

This/That: “Are you having a party on your birthday, or are you going to relax?”

I think many children (and adults!) are averse to telling adults “No,” especially when a command is implied. (“Did you clean your room?” “Are you going to sit quietly?” Hmmm if I say ‘no’ I will be in trouble with the adult.) So they are actually pretty likely to just lie and say what they think you want to hear.

Presenting a this or that question provides an alternative to lying, a ‘no, but’ scenario where they are presented with the reasonable consequences of a No (“if you’re not ready to sit quietly, you cannot do our quiet activity with us yet.”)

[pigandpepper]

River Cartwright is a fuck up. He is over-confident and too eager and starry-eyed. He races into situations face first without thinking three steps ahead. He's really bad at following orders.

But he's also clever. He's intuitive. He's quick on his feet. He's very capable physically and psychologically as an agent. He knows what to do in a bad situation, he doesn't freeze, he doesn't back down. When Lamb trusts him with a job, he damn well does it and does it well. He will back up his fellow agents, he'll protect them, he'll throw himself under the bus for them.

River thinks he's Jame Bond, but he's not, and that's the delightful part. River isn't smooth with women, but he's respectful and not pushy or amorous. He doesn't encroach on boundaries or try to fuck everyone he meets. Yes, he jumps into a fight and fuck the consequences, but unlike Bond or Bauer or whoever, it never ends well for River. Reality always kicks in.

And that's the awful part. River's life is dramatic irony 101, he doesn't realise his life isn't a movie, or one of the O.B.'s stories (even the O.B.'s stories aren't wholly accurate to real life considering how he edits what he tells River).

River is Hamlet - he thinks he's in one genre and a certain type of hero, but he's really the other, and that's what's so amusing and devastating. Any other story, River would be the clear hero, cutting through bad guys and saving the day, hang the consequences. But he's not, it's not, and that's the beautiful tragedy of it all.

[byjove]

If I see a company advertising with AI, it makes me lose trust in them and the services and goods they supply. If you’re too slimy and cheap to hire a voice actor for a 15 second ad or an artist to design promotional graphics, what other corners are you cutting? There was a nurse posting pictures of the AI generated advertisement his hospital posted everywhere and he was pointing out the errors in the image like the stethoscope having two sets of earpieces and the doctor’s fingers being wrong. I think if I walked into a hospital and saw that bullshit I’d be like “They’re charging me $80k for this procedure and not paying advertising people to do their job. Are they paying custodians to do their job? What else are they cheaping out on and could it be something that kills me?”

[storybookprincess]

so a very long time ago, my dad worked with an arson investigator

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

my dad has told me the parable of the fire extinguisher a hundred times, and i think about it a lot. i think about what it says about people and crises. i think about what it says about the grounding power of having a purpose. and i think about the importance of letting someone help me through something, even if that help is just going to be another casserole to throw into the freezer, because useless or not, that fire extinguisher might be the only thing holding them together

[sweatermuppet]

i don't want to start a free trial i want to own things for the rest of my life

[nyatzsche]

some of you need to put down chat gpt and pick the magic 8ball back up

[loveridden1999]

i hope something good happens to me. i hope something good happens to you too. i hope something good happens to all of us soon

[thealdersgateoffice]

Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Saskia Reeves behind the scenes of Season 5 of Slow Horses 🐌🐎

[archivedsoul]

so many people have inspired me to be nothing like them

[lakemojave]

It really helps to not be picky about what art you engage with actually. Gotta mix up your diet a bit from time to time

[lakemojave]

If you find you're bored of the folk punk you always listen to, try out a rap album. If you only ever watch classic cinema or more grounded art films, check out a fast and furious movie or something. Or try reading a book if you only ever consume film or tv. Or comics. Or go to an art museum. You may not like whatever it is you try out, and I promise you don't have to like it, but I can guarantee that you can't subsist on a monoculture. Be open to experiencing new art. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's bad, actually.

[scramratz]

everyone u reblog is safe right? i feel like u reblog a lot of ppl and i just want to make sure ur vetting them all first,,,

Everybody I reblog from is evil and does crimes aplenty

[hyper-fics-sationn]

My favourite pairing in Slow Horses is Catherine Standish and her teacup & saucer x

[herssian]

"there is no way you're not using chatgpt for at least a few things here and there no matter your stance on it" what the FUCK are you talking about

[dduane]

Every now and then messages of this kind hit my inbox, and normally I just delete them and (in severe cases) block the sender.

But other people are getting these too? Sheesh.

...And the sheer witlessness of them astounds me. (eyeroll) Yes, at my age of course I would absolutely start purposefully dulling down my general mental acuity, and allowing the writing skills I've accrued over nearly fifty years of sweat and toil to atrophy, so that I can be permitted to pay somebody else to use a tool built by stealing my own work (and that of thousands of my colleagues) and prostituting it to make some billionaire vulture capitalist richer! Why do you ask?

(side-eye) Do people even hear themselves. FFS.