A fan from Ireland of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Due South, Yes Minister, Better Call Saul and others. I have three RP subaccounts: bestcoordinatornarvin, givessweetness and ask_duckula.
'Why does every nonbinary person want top surgery' I dunno maybe because having visible breasts immediately makes everyone assume you're female and only female, and therefore put you into a binary. Also why are you assuming every nonbinary person has breasts.
I think people who believe that should also put some thought into whether every nonbinary person with breasts actually wants top surgery, or whether they've just decided that the nonbinary people with breasts who want to keep them don't "count" as nonbinary.
#i know plenty of nonbinary people who want breasts or like their breasts#but they're viewed as either transtrenders or trans women in denial <- prev tags
I have a new standard for the level of haterdom to aspire to, and it's Reddit User KismaiAesthetics, who hates doing laundry so much that he got really good at it, so that he can (I quote) do it right the first time, every time, and get back to watching cat videos on the Internet.
and by "really good at it," I mean that he does a bunch of reading on the chemistry of laundry, subscribes to academic journals about laundry, and buys a bunch of different laundry products (including from outside the US) to scrutinize their ingredients and test them for himself. he writes a bunch of incredibly detailed longposts about his findings on /r/laundry and his website, which is also about laundry. he even got interviewed about his laundryposts, in which he revealed he's writing a book about laundry. this man is like ahab and the white whale, if ahab had a reddit account and moby dick was a pile of clothes with cheeseburger stains on them
anyway the reason I encountered this guy was because recently, the household washer has been leaving these gross little oily brown flakes on anything washed in it. this is kind of a big problem for me, given that I not only have (literal, diagnosed, medicated) OCD which includes a contagion phobia, I also sew a bunch of stuff with the intent of gifting or selling it, and sometimes that involves prewashing fabric. only, you know, washing is supposed to make things cleaner, not dirtier.
and my research brought me to (gross photos warning!) Kismai's post on the very topic. apparently this stuff is called "scrud," and it's basically a residue that forms over time inside the nooks and crannies of a washing machine - leftover detergent reacting with mineral traces in tapwater to form a buildup that also traps dyes, grease, and other dirt, which bacteria then feeds on, because it wasn't already gross enough. it forms faster if you have hard water, use too much detergent (which most people do), use fabric softener, wash only on cold and the list goes on and on - point is, scrud is the reason that you have to actually clean your washing machine, or be super fastidious about how you do laundry.
(I'll take "things I wish school/my parents actually taught me" for 800)
so now I am engaged in a lengthy battle against scrud, armed with a tub of oxiclean and a sack of citric acid crystals. (we're renters, so disassembling the machine is out of the question.) pour in a scoop of oxiclean, run a machine clean cycle, pour in a scoop of citric acid, run another machine clean cycle, all while wiping piles and piles of scrud out of the drum at the end of each cycle. I'm on the eighth cycle now. there's still so much scrud. the reddit record for "how many cleaning cycles were needed to get a machine entirely free of scrud" is 22 cycles. help
it turns out that laundry sucks significantly less when your clothes and sheets and etc actually come out of the machine looking, feeling, and smelling clean, rather than looking, feeling, and smelling like despair dipped in slime
like, I have this pillowsheet I call my Depression Era Pillowsheet, because during a Real Bad Time of my life when 90% of all I could do was lie in bed and cry, that was the pillowsheet I laid and cried on. this went on for weeks, and it was never changed out because, again, 90% of my waking hours were Lie In Bed And Cry Hours. it did eventually get changed out, but no matter how many washes I put it through, it remained stained and slimy. like I'd throw it in every time I washed my clothes and it would still come out feeling like someone had applied a fresh layer of Weeping Slime Laminate to it. someone with more sense probably would have thrown it out but idk, I just never did for some reason
anyway! taking some pointers from the freaks over at /r/laundry, I grabbed an enzyme-based detergent, a booster (thing of More Enzymes and oxygen bleach that you add alongside detergent to make it clean gooder), and washed everything on hot (in a machine without a scrud problem), including the Depression Era Pillowsheet. it finally came out looking and feeling like fresh clean cotton?? what?? I hadn't even done the whole "soak it for 24 hours in various unsettling substances" thing??? wack
So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.
However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”
Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”
The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.
And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.
And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.
Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.
Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.
My read of this came from Hank’s own response to the situation which you can find here. I’ve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:
Obvs, Hank’s situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and that’s a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.
Some other notes:
1. As stated, I don’t bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something I’ve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-
2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didn’t even get into how they’re meant to train off user data but that’s another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, it’s a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.
3. I don’t want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that they’ll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isn’t a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.
4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But that’s another post if folks are interested.
Jim: Are you telling me the Foreign Office is keeping something from me?
Bernard: Yes!
Jim: But what?
Bernard: I don’t know! They’re keeping it from me too.
Jim: How do you know?
Bernard: I don’t know!
Jim: You just said that the Foreign Office was keeping something from me! How do you know if you don’t know?
Bernard: I don’t know specifically what, Prime Minister.
I was just talking with a friend who hates cooking which is so wild to me bc I love cooking so much it is hard for me to understand people that don't like it, but i know many exist. my parents don't like cooking either, but my grandmothers both do, so i feel like it jumped a generation for us. and then i also wonder how much of it is learned and how much not. so! poll time
do you like cooking and were you taught to cook by your family?
clambers into your inbox to give you a Free Gush Pass!! i'd love to hear any thoughts you have about our favourite super-anxious lieutenant, Reg Barclay 🥰💖
Oh my God you have no idea lmao. Buckle up, because he's my special little guy. (Even though he's. Y'know. Fuckin' tall.) Like he's so near and dear to my heart for reasons I can't 100% share.
Setting aside that Dwight is my favorite actor ever (the RANGE he has holy shit) I just love Reg Barclay.
Like, it was a little accidental, long story, but Reg ended up being a big catalyst for me getting into both TNG and The A-Team, too!
He's relatable with his crippling social anxiety, escapism, and his tendency to get totally lost in a given project/goal. He's adorable as hell with those great big brown eyes (and he's pretty, he's a very pretty man, but we can set that aside too, but also hot damn his nose, his jaw, his eyelashes, his—).
You can FEEL all of his emotions so deeply when he's on screen, he's soooo expressive and well-portrayed, and I think that can make some people uncomfortable. Like secondhand embarassment but with ANXIETY. (Dwight also does a great job with Murdock's ptsd in The A-Team. Phenomenal actor.)
And boy does he get a chance to have big feelings, with the Situations™️ they put that poor lieutenant in!
Occasionally the writing in TNG is a bit ableist/misogynistic and unfair to characters (which I could go into easily but it would make this answer waaaaaaaaaaaay longer), which impacts the show and how people end up remembering them or responding to characters long term. I think this most heavily impacts the slightly unusual chracters and the women, a good example of the former being Barclay.
But overall he's just a big anxious cinnamonroll. He's so good at his job!--but oh God there are people there and that's terrifying! He's so smart!--but oh God that means talking to people to communicate his findings and thats terrifying! He just wants friends!--but oh shit he has to keep himself together first without people being assholes and laughing at him! (Which explains him and Data becoming friends, since Data would never.) 'Cause God forbid someone stammer when they speak! That man needs a Lexapro or Zoloft or something!
But oh my God he tries so hard. Like in Realm of Fear where he is (no spoilers) on the cusp of a serious panic attack from sheer fear and you feel it, but he still overcomes, because he's a GOOD Starfleet officer. He's going to do his duty even when people doubt him, he is going to do what he thinks is RIGHT even when people doubt him, he just needs the space for people to understand he's got that severe anxiety.
When people extend that kindness to him, he improves so fast. (I've seen a gifset somewhere--it might be reblogged here or in my queue, that shows his progress over the series.) And that's just like anyone with neurodivergence/anxiety like that.
And oh my God he's got a smile that lights up the ROOM. Like oh that smile! Bottle that and cure all diseases!
I do think it's funny that people will judge him for his holodeck escapism (especially his early stuff) when people will literally do that kind of thing in their head or with rpf. He never let it affect how he treated people irl (unlike Geordi who holy shit my man, not cool), he just didn't feel like he could interact with people because they blew him off outside of the holodeck. He was venting steam and feelings in there because outside it was always "oh no, it's that freak who stutters," and I was so glad in Hollow Pursuits when Guinan was all "yeah I'd be late to work too if everyone treated me like shit." (Which they never fully stop doing on the show but I'm chalking that up to writers' ableism and honestly think in-universe they'd get over it eventually. Which goes back to the thing I could ramble on about and make this post crazy long but I'm not gonna.)
He's just SUCH a dimensional character for someone who barely shows up. Apparently Whoopi Goldberg (after working with him on The Long Walk Home) suggested he be considered for a part on TNG and boy I am glad she did so. Everyone is so perfect all the time and having someone like Reg grounds the show a lot (even if it gets cringe sometimes with how so many characters treat him, but again, that's the writers' biases coming through, I don't think 24th century people would be that dickish).
I have so many Reg thoughts though. For real. Like I have an autographed Barclay glossy AND a Barclay TNG trading card. Get behind me, Reg, I'll protect you.
The only thing I'll add to finish is that the TNG camera people were COWARDS.
oh my goodness your reply has made me smile so much!!!! i love it when people are so enthusiastic about their beloved fictional characters, and my god does Reg need the love 😭💔 the ableism you mentioned is so real and one of the few anachronisms in that era of Star Trek that makes you think, oh. this isn't a utopia. this is a television show written by people with very specific biases.
and that's why i'm so floored that some folks dislike Reg!! perhaps because he hits a little too close to home? i certainly felt very uncomfortable (and extremely protective) during his introductory episode 💖💖 either way, consider me indoctrinated into the Reg Barclay Defense Squad!!! thank you for this lovely reply - i'm going to go and watch his other episodes ASAP :3c
[ID: tiktok by @/juzt_sammie with the caption "POV: You're visually impaired." A man walks up to a wall outside with a paper notice taped onto it. He says, "What is this? Let me put on my glasses." He puts them on and takes the paper, reading, "Beware, quicksa—" then cuts himself off with an annoyed look at the camera. As he says this he starts rapidly sinking downwards into the quicksand out of frame. End ID.]
