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@fearlessmastermind
The Big Tech companies developing AI already have far too much power over our lives. We need lawmakers who won’t sell out our future to the whims and profit margins of Big Tech. We need regulations in place to keep up with AI development and guard against its potential harms. AI could be a net good for society. Or it could be a wrecking ball. Its future is not written in stone. It is written in code and we still have time to shape it.
why the FUCK is there a big spider on my bedroom wall it doesn't look like any spider i've ever seen in my entire life what the fuck
are you sure it's a spider?
yes i am it looks like this
oh that's a wolf spider. they taste like celery and pork and they aren't poisonous.
why is it in my room
and why do you know what it tastes like
@sicklythiasus why do you know what a wolf spider tastes like
nom nom.
yummy yummy in my tummy tummy
when and why did you eat a wolf spider
band camp, 2019. there was an infestation. i started eating them to get rid of them. i have since eaten cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, and those little green grass spiders.
the greenies taste like vegetarian sausage.
why was your solution to eat them
i mean, no one else was gonna.
Wolf spiders eat other spiders, so spiders George up there is getting the full spider eating experience with these ones. Also, for everyone else, it’s good to keep these girlies around. Again, they’re not poisonous but they will eat the spiders that are poisonous. Long term an infestation level population will sort itself once other food sources are diminished. I’ve got one that hangs out on my front porch, I call her Brenda.
There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?
I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!
Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.
A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.
Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...
I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.
Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar
The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come
Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.
DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.
I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.
Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm
Can't believe no one's mentioned Consider the Fork yet, which is about how environment/resources shape our ways of eating, which shapes both our culture and our concepts of politeness. So interesting, really recommend!
Seven Flowers and How They Shaped Our World by Jennifer Potter
It isn't so much about edible plants as it is about decorative ones, but I think it fits the theme of this growing list enough for me to add it.
Seven Flowers and
How They Shaped Our World by
Jennifer Potter
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
A Brief History of Vice by Robert Evans is a good one about psychoactive substances.
The people pushing through the SAVE act can’t be convinced by being show the harm it does. They’re already fully aware. That’s the point. They’re pushing it through because they don’t think they can win a fair election where everyone has easy access to the polls.
Paul of Scotland, Destiny Is In Your Hands, 2020 pencil on white paper, 11.69"x16.54"
DO NOT SCROLL AWAY. THIS IS NOT A PHOTO. THIS IS NOT OIL ON CANVAS. THIS ISN’T EVEN ACRYLIC ON CANVAS. THIS IS PENCIL ON WHITE PAPER!
PENCIL?!?
Beast mode.
In the conservative West, his embezzling and greed would be celebrated and welcomed into the inner circles of power.
It's never enough for these people.
My favorite scenes in the LotR books are the ones where Legolas has vital information and just decides it's not important to share.
Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??
Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??
Legolas please gain a sense of urgency
It's because legolas hasn't spent enough time with non-elves to remember that they don't know what he knows.
gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"
"I wonder what aragorn is listening for? must be hard to hear, what with all of the horses. How many horses are there, actually? 1... 2... 3..."
"What do your elvish eyes see?" is Aragorn saying, as politely as possible, "Because the REST OF US are at a significant disadvantage, Prince Dipshit."
The answer to "How did these Ancient People do this????" is basically always
1. A lot of dudes. Just a ton of fucking people from beginning to end of the process.
2. Ancient people weren't stupid, they just figured shit out the same way we do: fuck around until you find out.
3. We're gonna plan this out and it's gonna take ten fucking years, and you will cope.
4. Sticks and string are surprisingly versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes, like moving stuff and making sure things are even and go in the spot you wanted to put them in!
5. I want to make this easier and more efficient to move. If I put this on the round thing and push, it will move. If I put this in water, it will move. If I get some animals and rope and have a whole bunch of them drag it, it will move. All of these things are a better option than one guy trying to pick the whole fucking thing up.
"I'm not calling the people who believe in this conspiracy theory racist" I am. They're racist. Maybe not out of malice, but the fact that they believe in this is in itself racist. These conspiracies are always about brown people. Machu Pichu, the Pyramids, Göbekli Tepe, Easter Island, it is ALWAYS POC. It's never the Parthenon, it's never the Colliseum, despite the fact that these were built around the same time as some of the other sites these conspiracy chucklefucks like to throw around, it's never something fucking European. It's always "primitive people" with "stone tools" and "no understanding of modern engineering" so "clearly someone must have taught them this or given them the technology because CLEARLY they were just too Primitive and Savage to figure it out themselves." Fuck off with that shit.
Pantheon: Uses the world's largest individual piece of unreinforced concrete as a roof
Parthenon: Almost every aspect of it is curved to make it seem like everything is straight
Conspiracy nuts: Yeah that seems like something ancient people could figure out
Pyramids of Giza: One of the most basic three dimensional shapes made out of blocks that weigh 2-3 tons which could be moved in a plethora of ways as OP mentioned and is actually easier to construct than a cube of the same size because the structure lends itself to a built in ramp set up
Conspiracy nuts: It has to be aliens because the math is too hard!
* Side note: These examples were picked out because they're ones OP used. I realized that the way this is written could come off as a "Yeah, European architecture was more complex than Egyptian architecture" which is absolutely not my intention here. I just don't know how phrase it in a way that makes it clear I'm only trying to emphasize Conspiracy Nut Hypocrisy/racism.
That being said these specific constructions aren't really comparable to begin with.
First of all the Pyramids were made in a completely different time period. I'm talking ~2500 BCE vs ~450 BCE vs ~120 CE. Literally 2,000 year difference here, we are literally closer to the construction of the Pantheon than the construction of the Parthenon was to the construction of the Pyramids of Giza.
Second is they were built with different goals in mind. The Pyramids weren't meant to be fancy complex pieces of engineering. They were built to be impressive and stay impressive forever, which they did a really good job of considering that the impressive version we see today is literally stripped down. The Pyramids of Giza used to be taller with solid white facades capped in gold, the top layer was removed so it could be recycled into different building projects. Meanwhile the Pantheon and Parthenon were built to be impressive in a more pompous kind of way. A "look at our pretty and complex stuff you can't afford to make and are probably too stupid to properly appreciate anyway" kind of statement. Athens was insufferably pretentious about that kind of thing. If I remember right the Parthenon actually set off some conflict within the Delian League because because Athens used the defense funds it collected from the other city-states for what is essentially a vanity project dedicated to a single city's goddess.
If you want to look at Ancient Egyptian structures that have similar architectural complexity you'd want to look at stuff like the Ramesseum or The Valley of Kings. They're both still from completely different time periods compared to the Pyramids and well known Greco-Roman ruins(~1200BCE and ~1600BCE), but they're structures with more frequent use cases than "one guy's burial site". Well, the Valley of Kings is also a burial site, but it was for multiple people over the span of ~500 years so it was more actively maintained than something like the Pyramids. Ancient Egypt is its own branch of study because it just spans such a long space of time and between burying a lot of stuff themselves, constant looting (Worst modern offenders were the British, but they placed so many of their resources into burials that tomb raiding kind of propped up their economy by putting valuables back into circulation. The abundance of concern about tombs being disturbed, despite being a massive taboo to do so, was because it happened regularly), and tearing down older structures for their materials in order to make new structures there's so much to keep track of.
Which makes it even more insulting that instead of bothering to learn anything about this massive and complex culture racists on the internet try to argue that people stacking big bricks in a pile is not only unimaginable but also the most impressive thing they did.
Just to tack on my little bit of personal experience : the limestone blocks aren’t as impossibly heavy as the conspiracy nuts think it is. They’re just fucking lazy. They weighed about as much as a larger SUV or pickup truck and I’ve personally had to push those broken down pieces of junk a hundred yards uphill with just four dudes and some mild stretching. I think the most time it’s ever taken me was twenty minutes because the nice but confused owner of the truck kept tapping the breaks. “How could they have moved these two ton rocks?” Tell me you’ve never worked a day in your life without telling me you’ve never worked a day in your life
When Adam bit the apple he did it because he trusted Eve. Because he loved her. Adam bit into the apple because the woman he loved told him to, no matter what God said. No matter the rules of heaven. What’s heaven to a woman’s love anyway? What’s God to your wife? The first sins of humanity, were trusting others. Eve trusted a snake, Adam trusted Eve, and I trust you. Maybe that’s a sin, just like the first couple. Maybe everyone’s right about us and we’re sinners and we offend God. But like I said, what’s God to a woman’s love anyway? What has heaven got that I can’t find sitting next to you on a cool autumn morning?
KKK said the same thing about the hoods.
When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.
So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".
So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.
Truly thrilled to finally find this post on my dash.
