[the-uss-premise]

Console buttons from Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69)

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

I think the harm of denying people the right to control their own bodies is so, so much worse than the risk of people regretting the decisions they make. Regretting something you decided to do is a much healthier pain than the pain of regretting that you didn't get to have a choice.

[computer-voiced-by-majel-barrett]

Shoutout to my favorite genre of TOS episode:

[indecisor]

Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. isn’t Going to Make Art.” The New Yorker.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Text reading: Some individuals have defended large language models by saying that most of what human beings say or write isn't particularly original. That is true, but it's also irrelevant. When someone says "I'm sorry" to you, it doesn't matter that other people have said sorry in the past; it doesn't matter that "I'm sorry" is a string of text that is statistically unremarkable. If someone is being sincere, their apology is valuable and meaningful, even though apologies have previously been uttered. Likewise, when you tell someone that you're happy to see them, you are saying something meaningful, even if it lacks novelty. /End ID]

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Bank of England are letting you vote for what animals you want on their new bank notes: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/help-us-design-our-next-series-of-banknotes

Pine martens are an option!

PINE MARTENS??!?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Oh my god, you can choose up to two from each category:

HOW CAN I NARROW THIS DOWN

[v-spicata]

I chose the fox as one of mine, it's an obvious choice but it'd be nice to celebrate an animal so commonly denigrated. Not that old 'foul mart' has had much of a fun time of it historically either.

Some interesting options here in general, they've not just gone with the obvious animals.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I ended up not choosing the fox, purely because I actually reckon it's going to romp home - for all the controversy, it's the most common wild mammal people see in urban centres, and it's charismatic

I went pine marten, as I've been involved in helping their reintroduction to Wales, and then I wrestled with myself for an Age before finally going hedgehog.

Birds: puffins were the easiest choice. The UK - and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park in west Wales specifically - has a significant portion of the global breeding population of puffins, thanks to Skomer and Grassholm islands. In a country with the biodiversity depletion we have (bottom 10% of countries globally for biodiversity), the islands of Pembrokeshire are almost obscene in how high their biodiversity is, and it's for breeding specifically. We can be justly proud of those. Plus, puffins are fun clowns.

And then I agonised about the others until I finally went for the Great Spotted Woodpecker, a bird I do periodically see and get excited about every time

The Lumped-Together-Others: the bumblebee, you have to. I adore bumblebees.

And then I went for the marsh fritillary, because it's super endangered and I'm an environmentalist with a specialism in habitat management and ecology, and therefore spend a non-trivial amount of my time explaining how to manage for the little assholes.

But MY GOD it took me a while

[victusinveritas]

"Now I've shot so many Nazis, Daddy will have to buy me a sable coat." (From his Wikipedia article).

Neil Munro "Bunny" Roger

June 9, 1911-April 27, 1997.

Bunny Roger killed a bunch of Nazis and then invented Capri pants.

He was expelled from Oxford for his indiscrete gayness (discrete gayness being perfectly fine at Oxford and part of the curriculum until...today probably, at least like 1992?). Then, having been sent down to London, he started his own fashion business, and his first client was Vivien Leigh.

Bunny served in WWII, killing fascists in North Africa and Italy, and often wearing a mauve scarf in the field. Roger claimed that he had gone into a battle brandishing a rolled-up copy of VOGUE and commanding: "When in doubt, powder heavily!"

Roger was known in high society for his themed soirées; Diamond, Amethyst, and Flame Balls were held to celebrate his 60th, 70th, and 80th birthdays. He wore a curious plum colored catsuit with a feathered headdress at his 70th birthday ball in 1981. At his 80th, he made his entrance in a catsuit of scarlet sequins with a cape of orange organza, greeting his guests from behind a wall of fire. His parties were covered by the newspapers, including a New Year's Eve Fetish Ball where the proper upper class mixed with young guests in rubber S/M gear.

From an obituary: "Beneath his mauve mannerisms, Bunny was stalwart, frank, dependable and undeceived; to onlookers a passing peacock, to intimates, a life enhancer and exemplary friend."

From another obituary:

He served valiantly in every way.

[shabbytigers]

happy 125th birthday to bunny roger

[victusinveritas]

Found this color photo:

And this in-memoriam piece.

[doyouknowwhatimeme]

[gamer-crow-deactivated20250412]

If radio wasn't loaded with ads for the dumbest shit possible, I'd prefer radio to everything else.

[mozukumi]

I'm going to use this as a jumping off point to mention the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act.

It's... pretty much what it says on the tin. Some car manufacturers are phasing out AM Radio from their cars so they can replace them with their own streaming services - this bill seeks to make them a mandatory feature.

As somebody whose day job is in radio, I totally agree that the amount of ads and the quality of the ads is ridiculous. Personally, I don't find radio to be an amazing source of political news broadcasting.

But do you know what it is really good at? Providing emergency broadcasts during extreme weather events.

When power and internet is down, radio can be one of the only sources of information, and it's helped provide lifesaving information during these times.

(Plus, at least in my area of the country, emergency weather alerts override and interrupt programming when broadcast - even during pesky ads!)

So if you want to toss your signature in support, you can head on over here.

I want to make it clear I'm not an expert in this legislation or anything - this is just the stuff I know through working in the industry.

[sic-sempervirens]

AM radio can be one of the only available and reliable sources of local/regional news, weather and traffic, emergency or not. Not to mention community broadcasts.

(Plus, have you listened to any podcasts lately? It’s literally six minutes of ads on either end)

[noctumsolis]

Also you can build an AM radio receiver out of little more than scrap. Are you going to? No, almost certainly not, but the point is that the technology is simple, cheap, robust and repairable.

[lord-kitschener]

I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love

I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on

‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.

[durnesque-esque]

My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)

I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson. 

The hoodie as a veil. 

Weisman cigarettes

Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker. 

No Vacancy sign on the motel. 

Dove sticker over Maria’s head. 

Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head. 

The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”

The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’

The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet. 

It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!

Ugh.

New favorite interpretation of the nativity. 

[alextheraven]

Ezekiel 34 15-16 on the phone

[clockworkvulpine]

Good news sticker above José

Maria sitting on a donkey

Shepherd Watches advertisement in the newspaper

Gloria sticker on the payphone

[bending-sickle]

from an exhibit of nativity sets in barcelona (2023), with jesus born next to atm machines (top), in a war-destroyed movie theater (middle), and in an alley (bottom, featuring graffiti saying “coronavirus”, “no human being is illegal”, and the anarchist symbol)

[determinedapathy]

@apocrypals

[apocrypals]

Reblogging to share art without inviting “actually it wasn’t a stable” correction discourse

[venovenous]

peace and love on Earth..

[monacellipress]

Jellyfish mosaic tile piece, Havana, Cuba. From Great Houses of Havana.

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[holy0ak6-deactivated20240421]

[squeeblr]

via bree newsome bass on twitter: 

“The widely circulated timeline created by @Zerflin does a great job in showing how recently slavery & segregation occurred & that they lasted longer than the modern era. 

“I'd like to offer this timeline as another way of viewing the same period of history to show the constancy of both Black resistance in US & efforts of the white power structure to maintain racial caste since 1619.”

https://twitter.com/breenewsome/status/986427881680228354

[queen-mihai]

This second picture is MUCH more accurate!

[queen-mihai]

I had the exact same experience the second time I looked at this picture as the first time. I was looking like "what is this green line? Like suddenly everything is OK? It's not. Racists are still trying to push us back to 1619. Nothing has been fixed. We still need to fight. Hard!

[headspace-hotel]

today my wisdom is: the ecological crisis of our planet is not a thing that will Suddenly destroy us sometime in the next century—it has taken decades of continuous work for our biosphere to be preserved thus far, and it will take decades more of continuous work to continue preserving it.

The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."

Things will continue to steadily get worse without steady action, but "augh! it's already too late to stop climate change and mass extinctions!" is specifically the worst response

[headspace-hotel]

what I mean is, there is a persistent fallacy that the present situation of a thing is always worse than the past, even if there have been fluctuations in badness.

This is not true. There is a great wealth of specific cases where ecosystems/species/a specific anthropogenic impact on the environment is CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, better than it has been at any point in the past 100 years

[headspace-hotel]

I've been researching the history of conservation in the USA...and I think current doomers would benefit from knowing just how bad things got throughout the 20th century.

The eastern USA's natural environments were fucking razed. We went scorched earth on everything.

In the 1930's, DEER and WILD TURKEYS were almost eliminated from my state. Deer. Wild turkeys. Common animals that you can see all the time.

I've seen animals close to my home that a person in the 1970's would not have been able to see. I saw river otters and a bald eagle a couple months ago! Farmer family friend remembers when a bald eagle sighting here made the news. There is a thriving population of elk (16,000 animals) in the Appalachian Mountains, for the first time since before 1850!

We actively tried to exterminate so many species. Bison. Wolves. Mountain lions. The US GOVERNMENT PAID PEOPLE TO KILL CARNIVORES. They're still here. They're reclaiming their old territories. All is not lost

[bogleech]

There was a time most American cities almost never saw a blue sky. Brown and yellow smog was the norm and rivers were garbage sludge that are now teeming with fish. People don't know that government environmental regulation actually did succeed, that the EPA really worked as intended. Now it gets eroded because people think it isn't making a big difference, and they think that because they haven't seen what it's still holding back.

[melongifts]

Hey anyone notice how google translate is being pretty liberal with their translations as of late? Takin some real liberties to infer tone.

[melongifts]

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

I'm just like... what is anyone who is translating what I'm thinking into their own language going to think when a translation app decides that it knows my intended tone? When online communication is already so complicated and nuanced? I'm a non-native so I'm spending ages agonizing over 117 characters, but when I'm chatting in English I'm not being so deliberate. How likely is it that tools that 'naturalize' are going to make choices that don't reflect reality and lead to insulting misunderstandings? I spoke with an English learner just yesterday who thought they were being bullied (they were not, the commenter in question was just excitedly infodumping about sociology) because something was lost in translation, and I wonder if it's because of tools making choices like this. I'm just a luddite I don't trust stuff like this. stinks of ai asking me if it can rerwrite my email in a more quirky style.

[melongifts]

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

I AM SO SICK OF DEFAULT AI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rabbitrah]

Me thinking why a whale (big) would eat krill (small) and then I remembered rice (yum)

[rabbitrah]

so few people appreciate the wisdom I have to offer.........

[rylandgracie]

i can't get over this quilt and how cool it looks against the cold contrast of the ship

[grouphug33]

Eva and Grace’s dynamic is so important to me. They’re in love platonically. Like, that’s not a common dynamic. She put the way he likes his coffee into the ship’s computer. He follows her around like a puppy. In the book, she cracks jokes with him and him only. She cares about his opinion. He was the only one she asked about the coma gene, wondering if it was worth it.

He’s her best friend, and she doesn’t even know it. They’re so close, that in the book, people think they’re sleeping together, and poor Grace is so confused because he thought that was his platonic work wife, wdym people think we’re sleeping together, that’s my person that I crack jokes with and then she glares at me because they’re not funny.

She’s softer with him than anybody else and is only ever vulnerable around him. We see in the movie, he’s the only one who ever gets her to smile, and sometimes even laugh, and then she serenades all of them, but mainly him, and he stares at her with those big, shiny eyes so lovingly, and she points at him when she sings, “everything’s gonna be alright”, and then she gives him those eyes, so loving.

And then she’s trying to stop herself from crying when she’s sending him away because, against her will, he’s become her person, and somewhere along the way, she’s become his, and they will have forever ended this relationship on bad terms, and nothing can fix that.

It’s a platonic tragedy. It’s a platonic love story. This is something we don’t get often, or, like, ever, and it’s deep and it’s tragic and it’s sad.

But even after, Eva’s still taking care of him. Packing clothes she knew would bring him comfort. Programming the ship to know how he likes his coffee. And Grace is still watching out for her, speaking to her directly in his video logs, with that same lopsided smile he used to throw her way.

He uses Rocky’s sign for goodbye, and she uses it back, and how did this book and movie give us such a deep platonic friendship because, guys, this NEVER HAPPENS.

Eva and Grace, the platonic male/female friendship of all time.