Nerdalanche

An avalanche of my nerdy thoughts

[maraschino-fairy-deactivated202]

palestine masterpost-masterpost

i've been trying my best to collect a bunch of links to other, more structured resources about the genocide in gaza, and what you, reading this, can do about it, that i'm going to compile here.

DON'T SCROLL PAST. LOOK THROUGH THE LINKS. REBLOG.

less and less people are talking about gaza every day, but it is still a very real crisis.

education, donations, speaking out, global links (masterpost)

links to contextual articles

for americans - state/congressional contacts

how you can help palestine - donations, petitions, campaigns, upcoming protests (masterpost)

non-politically motivated charity links

canary mission

petitions and congressional contact (masterpost)

education, current news, taking action, direct action and donations, current protests (masterpost)

small monetary actions

2700 ebooks on israel and palestine, available for free

thorough article by storiesfromgaza, dated 10/30/23

targeted boycott + bds

how to find state/congressional contacts, bds, email template, donation links

sudan and congo

egypt, us/uk/canada/europe congressional contacts

direct links to help palestine

educate yourself (twitter links)

translating gaza (instagram link)

bds/targeted boycott information

compilation of palestine info and how to support it (masterpost), dated 10/28/23

latest info as of 11/3/23 and large amounts of immediate action to take (masterpost)

history of palestine and israel - articles, books, films, social media (masterpost)

socials to follow

journalists in north gaza

[cosmicallytiredd]

hate to break this to you but if you call yourself self aware but you are only aware of your faults and never acknowledge your strengths you are not self aware. you have repackaged your self hatred

[wizardpotions]

Christmas as a cultural icon is starting to get really dystopian in a climate sense, december has historically been a time of year in which there would be snow in a significant portion of europe and north america, and the fact that its not even icy this time of year and all the christmas songs and decorations reference a time of year that will likely never exist in the same way again in my life time is so strange.

[novapsa]

(Stares in bewildered Australian) And?

[wizardpotions]

I swear to fucking god if I see another post about someone from the southern hemisphere saying shit like this. No one on Tumblr is capable of understanding when someone is talking about their own experience and be normal about it. I don't even really give a shit about the Christmas side of this just that climate change has gotten so bad that there is no longer ice in Scotland in December and you should be worried about that actually. Imagine if people came on here being like I don't give a shit about Australian wildfires because it doesn't effect me

[jv]

Just saying, while I share the sentiment of being weirded out by increasingly warm winters, the idea of "snowy Christmas" is profoundly anglocentric, even within Europe.

The concept of a "white Christmas" is pretty rare to experience anywhere in Europe southern than Amsterdam (so 3/4ths of Europe, population-wise). Hell, even some of the nordic capitals (Copenhagen and Stockholm) only get white Christmas maybe once per decade or so. Sure, it can snow everywhere, but in December? It's rarely enough for the snow to actually settle.

So yeah, not really a very significant portion of Europe, really.

[wizardpotions]

Oh my god you people can't read anything without being mad that it's not about you.

[letsrevince]

[simonlorden]

I live in Central Europe and we ABSOLUTELY used to have snow in December when I was a kid, roughly twenty years ago. We don't anymore. Wtf are some of these replies on.

[hajima-7]

the comments on any social media in the past few years are literally just this now lol. aka Whataboutmeism.

[well-only-mostly-dead]

As someone from southern Arizona, USA, I also grew up in a place where snow just doesn't happen. Yeah songs about winter wonderlands werent quite right but i k ew was snow was.

And more so it was *cold*. Breathing out and seeing your breath fogging the air was a magical. The dead grass field at school would be icy and dewy in the early morning and was entertaining to play on even though it thawed by noon. We'd be freezing in the car waiting for the heat up. We'd need to turn the heat on a little at some point. We'd be bundled in blankets. And somehow this all added to a sense that even though it didn't snow, there was wintery magic here too.

Now none of those things really happen here. It took until a few days after Christmas to be cold enough to put a sweater on. We still haven't turned our heat on. It was actually annoyingly humid on Christmas. You don't walk outside and feel the sharp, cold air in your lungs.

I'm not going to say Australians are stupid for going to the beach or whatever on Christmas just because I can't grasp the different hemispheres. I still think of summer and beaches even though we don't have beaches in my state. Or pools even though I didn't grow up having access to pools. I can understand people's relationships to holidays and seasons regardless of my own experiences.

But more importantly on my rant:

There was a short story I read like a decade ago in elementary school about sunglasses. The children in the story found them pretty funny. They must've been some weird fashion because they made everything dark. After all, they lived in a world where the sun had been blotted out by the haze of pollution. You wore bubble helmets outside to breath and it was dark so society was struggling in a world where sunlight is very important to life. But they'd never seen it. And there were people who had forgotten just how bright it has been.

That's what Christmas songs are becoming. They talk about snowy traditions around this time of year because it happens to be a big holiday that connects with a big season change. And that season is vanishing in its intensity because of climate change. These are the kind of songs that could become a funny thing of the past. And the people who never personally experienced it are very quick to join in and write them off. You sound like the people who say climate change isn't happening because somewhere in the world it's snowing. Or that you personally don't recall it ever snowing. Children don't starve somewhere else! I've eaten today! How very Fox News of you.

But it's okay, you're owning all those selfish north hemispherecentric people who try to talk about the impact. Cause that impact isn't affecting us in dry arid places as our states and countries go up in flames every summer. As if I don't remember almost having to evacuate my campus a week before summer break due to a wild fire as much as I remember how little snow my campus got around the same time.

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

[dawaxxenpith]

At risk of sounding like a hater and an asshole this looks like AI and if its somehow not, the editor who reworked images and sharpened them up made it look like AI

Edit: yeah its AI

[theromanbarbarian]

This is the actual image (from a 6 year old reddit post so def not AI). Either someone asked AI to recreate it or AI, being the plagiarism machine it is, was asked for a pic of dogs finding humans in the snow and just ripped off the first image it could find. Another reminder that AI doesn't actually create anything. Also real cute dogs.

[badboneszone]

Actually a fantastic example for when you need to illustrate to someone that AI art is theft, blatantly, and not in some abstract way

[chessna2]

American friends: If you are so convicted to donate to food banks during the ending of SNAP benefits, as someone who worked in nonprofit, please know it is much more impactful to donate MONEY than it is to donate food. Food banks can order items in bulk and get them tax free, and it gives them the flexibility to order what they need.

Check on your neighbors, help each other out 🙏🏻

[cripple-punk-dad]

Ok so at this point I've had two people roll up to me in manual wheelchairs, well, one of them was somebody pushing somebody who was nonverbal at the time, but it still counts. They asked me why I had zip ties around my tires.

It's winter where I'm living and we have really bad snow. And the snow plow people are really bad at their jobs probably because there aren't snow plow people who clean sidewalks. As a solution I got to thinking about how I could increase the traction on my wheels. And the most redneck thing I could think of was taking a bunch of zip ties and tying them around my wheels. They last surprisingly long, and work surprisingly well. It's basically the same premise as chains for your tires during the winter.

I chose to space them out pretty evenly so there's about one for every spoke. You could probably do more or less depending on how many you want and how much traction you get but I wouldn't go more than three per spoke. I realize that it's a bit later in the winter, and I probably should have made a post about this sooner, but I came up with it about a week ago. So please share this, even if you're not disabled, because there are tons of people I know who are stuck in their houses because they can't get around in the snow. A pack of zip ties costs about $5, which compared to $200 knobby snow tires is a big save, and if you want to invest you could get colored zip ties.

[fandomshatefatpeople]

Sharing for accessibility

[catgirlwheels]

Oh fuck yes. Thank you all the abled people between op and me this is exactly what I needed to see 💜

[wishuponastarion]

ooh sweet, thanks for the tip

(for anyone using their chair both indoors and outside, highly recommend wheelchair 'slippers'/wheel socks like these so you don't tear up wood/vinyl/linoleum flooring with the zip ties!)

[fxlthyangxl-deactivated20240122]

website

[hesbythecampfire]

StopNCII.org is operated by the Revenge Porn Helpline which is part of SWGfL, a charity that believes that everyone should benefit from technology, free from harm. Founded in 2000, SWGfL works with a number of partners and stakeholders around the world to protect everyone online

Sounds legit

[songue85]

StopNCII.org is operated by the Revenge Porn Helpline which is part of SWGfL, a charity that believes that all should benefit from technolog

[nosferatusnoopy]

everyone reblog this!!

[uncleasad]

[Image ID: screenshot from TikTok(?) containing the following text:

Cousins, if someone ever edits your photo with Al or Photoshop to create a nude photo, then you go to www.stopncii.org/and submit the original photo and the edited photo, then they will remove the edited photo from all the places on the Internet. You don't need to talk directly to anyone for this and your identity will remain confidential

/end ID]

Per StopNCII.org, only their partner sites will remove the images, not “all the places on the Internet”—but that’s better than nothing.

[demi-queen]

Sometimes you have to write fanfics of your own DnD campaign because no one else knows anything about the characters or the plot but damn there was a lot of unexplored potential and also what if it was a coffee shop au?

[aq2003]

every day british actors wake up and think to themselves fuckkkkk i HAVE to help the incredibly bigoted woman make more money so she can funnel it into killing trans people i have to do it bro if i don't do it i will die

[beaniebaneenie]

In case y'all needed proof that continuing to engage with HP and fucking over trans folks is in fact a CHOICE, Daniel Radcliffe has refused to even have a cameo, despite being repeatedly asked.

For those that don't speak British, this is about as close as he can get to officially, publicly saying, "for FUCK'S sake, get that thing away from me and stop associating me with it, I do not want my name attached to that bigotry."

Daniel consistently redirects the topic away from Jo and toward the Trevor Project, an organization he has been heavily involved with for almost 20 years. He puts his money where his mouth is and uses his platform and his reach to amplify queer voices and queer struggles. He explicitly supports trans people, and is choosing to walk away from a very large and very easy paycheck, because he values trans lives over anything he could get from HP.

Emma and Rupert also won't go near this reboot. Jo has stated the reason she's doing it is BECAUSE the three of them refuse to support her vile hatred.

Every actor who puts their name on this, on any level, deserves to own the choice they're making with their whole chest. If they decide the paycheck is worth being ten toes down on transphobia? They're adults. They chose. And they deserve to be treated accordingly. Actions speak louder than words.

And if you give it a moment of attention or a single penny, you deserve to face the consequences of that choice too.

[hollowgods-deactivated20250921]

Being told to stop using em dashes in my writing because ChatGPT uses them a lot and people might think it's written by AI...

[mikkeneko]

On a more serious note: there's no point in changing your style to be less like AI, because AI adapts based on what the most popular style is. It will also change. I'm not interested in participating an eternal Zen archer's race with a machine.

[hostilecandle]

If ANY of yall EVER do this shit to me, im deleting every single fic out of spite.

If I ever catch one of yall doing this to another author and I know youre a follower of my work I will block you personally on every platform

None of yall are the fic police. I DESPISE genai. I think its an insult to art, humanity, and the planet itself. But aint not a single fucking person here qualified to pick apart a strangers fic looking for a gotcha moment to make yourselves feel superior. If you think something is ai you can ask the author (most are proud of the ai use and will just tell you straight up) if they say yes you have your answer and can warn people. If they say no and you dont believe them you block and quietly keep it between you and maybe a close group of friends. Spreading misinformation is DANGEROUS. And NONE of you doing this shit are anywhere near qualified to do it.

THIS GOES DOUBLY FOR ARTISTS.

[hodari-pavels-good-boy]

Posting this here from my main too bc I feel that strongly about it

You dont get to witch hunt and scour peoples work just frothing at the mouth hoping someone messes up so you can publicly humiliate and gang up on them. Fuck genai and every single poser and lover that uses it but if you are not 1000000000% certain that something is made with it you shut. the. fuck. up.

Pathetic loser behavior on display here

[mintedwitcher]

I'm about to get mean because this shit? this pisses me all the way off.

"hurr durr these very common writing practices are SUPER OBVIOUS AI TELLS!!!!!!!!!! obviously this is an AI invention and not the result of AI being trained on THOUSANDS OF REAL FUCKING STORIES!!!!!!! we're all very intelligent!!!!!!!"

I hate yall. I hate yall for fucking ruining fanfic with your goddamn motherfucking AI obsession. "ooh there's em dashes!" YEAH REAL WRITERS USE THOSE. "there's long paragraphs!" YEAH BECAUSE THATS HOW PEOPLE WRITE STORIES.

we're not "writing like AI" - AI is writing like us, because it fucking stole from us in the first fucking place.

I've never used AI in my work, not ever, but guess what, my fics are ALL written like that. long paragraphs, long sentences, em dashes and hyphens and other grammatical tools, because I fucking know HOW TO WRITE.

quite frankly, if you think these things are "genAI inventions" you're just telling the world that YOU DON'T READ ENOUGH.

[lemon-russ]

First of all, they criticize the use of an em-dash as em hyphen. Either they do not actually know the difference between a hyphen and an em-dash, or are attributing all hyphens being used as em-dashes as AI, which is not true. An Em-dash (— or dash the length of an M) is proper grammar and stylization, used in place of a comma. Since most people do not know how to make one offhandedly, lots and lots of fic writers use - as —, but lots of writers know how to make — ! It's two -- on lots of writing programs, or hold down - on a phone.

Use on an em-dash is common in fics just for pacing and writing style prefrances. Having commas all the time is bland. Having suddent thought switches with — is fast and changes the tone.

I also keep seeing people attributing things like sentance structure to AI. Using or not using proper grammar is not indicative of AI usage, nor is having a more varied vocabulary or anything, because AI *learns from us*. It's writing what people write, because is plagerizing.

I say this as someone who's full time job was reading and grading AI slop generation (the job started off as webpages and search rating, unfortunately large company who I cannot legally name got really into AI) so I think I have read more AI generated slop than the average bear.

You can't tell its creative writing apart from people with one easy trick, or one little tell, because EVERYTHING it generates is scraped from real human writing. So there will always be people who write like that. It also changes it's writing depending on what it's scraping. It will have mispellings and poor grammar if it is drawing from a source that has that, and if it's drawinf from published fiction, will be proper and written like an editor touched it, because its plagiarizing people.

You can start to suspect things like quick articles online are AI, with different tells, if you do nothing but read AI slop 8 hours a day. I can point out which listicles online have been touched by a human at least, and I can speculate with some accuracy if commercial content was AI written.

But even I, someone who has been forced to SCOUR AI slop as a day job, can not tell you this "one easy trick" for spotting AI content in writing. Because it is plagerism. Someone at some point did write those words, it's just mashing it together with other sentances and replacing what it recognizes as names and adjectives to match what it was going for.

The only tell I can think of that I don't see humans do much, but they absolutely can, is when it recognizes the places an adjective goes, sometimes it likes to put "it was ____ and ____." But can't actually recognize what should go there so will repeate the adj., like "it was sad and sad."

But, a human writer forgetting to go back and edit for an error also can do this. Don't harrass people for their fics. If you genuinely think it was written by AI, block them or ask them.

I detest generative AI. But I also detest people attacking real human beings who it is stealing from en masse over proper grammar and stylization. Do not chase the real human writers away from fic just because AI is scraping AO3 every 2 months.

[thememedaddy]

[chucktaylorupset]

(via hornedchick)

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

[yaboywillyshakes]

[its-a-pain-having-a-name]

Reference tag for writing

[gamechangershow]

🚌Presenting the BRAND-NEW season - Dimension 20: On a Bus!

DM'd by Katie Marovitch, and as players: Aabria Iyengar, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Jasmine Bhullar, and Mark Mercer!

Watch the full episode here

[quiddie]

Hey friends!

Just wanted to thank everyone for being so lovely and supportive of D20: On a Bus!

It was a bit of a rocky shoot, but I’m really proud of the story we told! I’ve wanted to play with Jasmine, Brennan and Mark for SO LONG and it’s so lovely that I got to do so at Katie’s table. 💖

So here’s the thing: the first season (30 episodes! Can you believe it?!) is in the can, but speaking for myself I *know* the story of my character Bluey™️ and their friends getting from NoHo to LAX is far from over. And that’s where you come in:

If y’all help us prove to Sam that there’s audience excitement for the sequel, we can start filming TODAY.

So please like, share, repost, and tell your friends so we can get back ON A BUS!

[thespoonisvictory]

people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good

[thespoonisvictory]

it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”

people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.

[jabberwockypie]

And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.

Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.

Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.

[swordplease]

This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.

[demi-queen]

Stuff started to catch up to me in high school. I had always pretty much been a straight-A student and my “gifted kid” ability to learn in the way that schools wanted me to were only highlighted by the fact that my older brother had always struggled with school (my mom has confessed to me recently that she thought that he might have a learning disorder but that no one would listen to her when she brought up the potential for that and since that was her first kid she didn’t know what to do about it). But then my grades started slipping. Instead of straight-As I was getting more Bs and even a C here and there. Now, I know these aren’t bad at all (something I have had to come to terms with), but they were bad for ME and it wasn’t necessarily a result of me suddenly not understanding the material. In addition to being a “gifted kid” I also have pretty bad, treatment resistant, chronic anxiety and depression. Putting all those together in combination with teenage hormones means I was experiencing some pretty bad gifted-kid burnout. I recognized this (even if I didn’t know exactly what was wrong I knew something was) and did some research. I had started going to therapy in jr high for my anxiety but dropped that therapist when it turned out she was only making my anxiety worse— the point is I already knew my head was a little fucked up. So in my research I found out about 504 plans. Now if you don’t know what that is, it’s a thing put in place to help people with mental disorders get accomadations in school. I’m sure someone on here can give a better explanation of it if you want to know more, or you can try googling it yourself. Anywhomst, I brought this to my mom and we set up a meeting with my school. That meeting didn’t go well. Essentially, the school said that they weren’t going to give me a 504 plan because my grades were already good so clearly I didn’t need one. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that that’s not something they were allowed to do. You can’t be denied a 504 plan based on grades. Anyways, that year I got the worst grades of my life. I actually did fail a few classes and my depression was in the dumps. Almost a decade later and I’m only just recovering from that burnout and I hope to be finishing my undergrad this next year. I plan on giving myself a little more time after that to not be in school before diving into my PhD.

In a recent trip home from college to visit my family, I was talking with my mom about my youngest brother and whether or not he was getting accommodations for his ADHD now that he was starting high school. She told me that now all my siblings got accommodations in school and apologized for not fighting harder for me to get accommodations when that initial meeting went so poorly. I don’t blame my parents for not getting me the help that I needed, because I know that they tried. They were new parents, I was their second kid, and I was and am so incredibly different from my older brother that it was almost like they were starting over entirely with me. My parents didn’t know what they were doing and they were fought every step of the way when they were trying to get me help because I was a “gifted kid” and clearly didn’t need it. My parents have 6 kids in total. Their youngest is starting high school this upcoming fall. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that as an oldest kid I had to experience a lot of my parents’ fuck ups in order for my younger siblings to get the help they need. I’m lucky in that my parents were able to look past the “gifted kid” to see the struggling kid even though the school wasn’t willing to; I know that not every “gifted kid” gets parental support— I’m pretty sure a factor of ME getting that support is that I’m like 99% sure my mom was ALSO a “gifted kid” growing up.

[typewriter-worries]

there’s this extremely kind soul of a woman on instagram that makes accessible recipes that don’t require standing, chopping, or a stove and she might just have a permanent place in my heart

[peridotglimmer]

She's on YouTube too! For non-Instagram using friends:

I love her, she's great. Her recipes are friendly for both physical and/or intellectual disabilities. And her 5-year-old helps her cook. 🥰

Link to her YouTube channel:

Epicurious Expeditions

Celebrating the intersection of food and culture, travel tales, social commentary, grieving out loud. 🇳🇬/🇺🇸 👰🏽🧒🏽👧🏽👩🏽‍💼⚖️ Paid Collaboration

[whollyjoly]

katie marovitch my absolute beloved, i would watch an entire season of dimension 20: on a bus no questions asked