[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Thou wouldst not downloadeth a car

[bigbigbigtruck]

i’ll be real, kitten, daddy needs multiple wealthy and powerful folks to die in a painful, drawn-out, and generationally humiliating manner

[3rdrealm-deactivated20200301]

i think the crux of human misery stems from the fact that our skeleton just wants to sit around and accumulate dust in an ancient barrow (that is the innate imperative of all skeletal remains in-case you didn’t know) but our meat has its own agenda which creates this fundamental conflict of interests

[moghedien]

One like nitpick thing that drives me crazy is when people call Blue Whales the largest whales or the largest living mammals or some shit like that

Because yes that is true. But when you frame it like that you are completely disregarding the absolutely batshit reality that Blue Whales are the largest animals that have ever existed on earth through the entire history of the planet and they are alive right now today

[smol-blue-bird]

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

[smol-blue-bird]

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

[smol-blue-bird]

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

[theriu]

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

[scottlava]

“Let's get you on stage!”

[victusinveritas]

[weirwoodsugar]

i love when fantasy novels are about 35 year olds…why is everyone in books 20 or 16 all the time

[weirwoodsugar]

(defensively) 35 is one of the most normal ages to be

[daco-showman]

why can rockstar games institutionalise you for life like nikita kruschev for being autistic

[transhuman-priestess]

He didn't steal 10 million dollars. They made that number up as a loss, they never fucking had it. Rockstar has spent more than a billion fucking dollars on GTA VI and will likely make billions more when it gets released.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

Capitalism is disgusting.

[fuckblast]

Nobody should buy GTA til they free Arion Kurtaj

[transhuman-priestess]

What with GTA VI going up for pre-order i'd just like to remind everyone that rockstar conspired with the UK government to lock an 18-year-old away for life for hacking them.

[xenosaurus]

every time a website describes "appetite suppressant" as a feature of a type of food, i kill another hostage

[xenosaurus]

"nuts are an appetite suppressant!" BECAUSE THEY ARE FOOD. YOU ARE LESS HUNGRY BECAUSE YOU ATE FOOD.

[xenosaurus]

the diet industry is so unbelievably fucked and it’s in your fucking walls. “keeps you full longer so you don’t get hungry an hour after lunch when you’re trying to do something” is a neutral statement of benefit but no we have to treat pistachios like crucial medicine in the war against basic bodily functions.

eating disorder recovery is just getting angry over and over again because food is treated like some horrible necessary evil instead of one of the great joys of life. eat some nuts because they taste good and you are a living thing that thrives on pleasure and calories. you need both.

I need to get some sleep but in case you need to hear it: you deserve to eat. your appetite is not the enemy. if you can, treat yourself to a filling meal of foods you love today. throw pistachio shells at people. be free.

[xenosaurus]

DISCLAIMER: if you or your selected victim have a nut allergy, consider throwing rocks instead. I love you.

[bigandretired-deactivated202501]

[depsidase]

[awakefor48hours]

Every once in a while, I wish the friendship meter from the Sims was real so that way when people tell me "I used Chat-GPT" they can visually see just how much respect I just lost for them in that moment.

[berkelbites]

One time an acquaintance told me she entered Snape's star chart into chatgpt and I could physically feel that meter dropping three separate times over the course of her sentence

[memeuplift]

[emilyscartoons]

[redstonedust]

normalize being dogshit amateur at your special interests and hyperfocuses. no more autistic savants. yes i am very into that topic no i am not good at it. we exist <3

[xylophonetangerine]

pissing is actually a trauma response to drinking water