lotus

writing with my minddd (19☆she/they)

[shadowgremlin]

My wife’s idea of decompressing after the busy holiday was to rearrange every piece of furniture in our home is this an ADHD thing or just a her thing

I’m not complaining the way she’s done it is much better than it was it’s just like how is this your idea of a relaxing weekend

[kaity--did]

Listen I don't get to decide when the drunk elf that is my executive actually does the functioning but when he does we have a SMALL WINDOW OF TIME before he finds the schnapps again and we're done

[honeysbunchesofoats]

[kaity--did]

yes this exactly

[luminouspica]

So to me, there are spoons (general energy cost) and carnival tickets (specific energy cost).

Spoons can be used pretty much anywhere.

Carnival tickets are only good for the carnival, and it’s only in town for a limited amount of time.

So like, if I get “kitchen cleaning” carnival tickets, I can’t use that to clean my bedroom, that’s not where the carnival is.

[lingonberry24]

phrase added to permanent vocabulary

[high-quality-tiktoks]

it’s been a few days and he loves it

[claptrap14]

[fairycosmos]

everything is political and it’s not even the slightest bit hard to understand why that is. im so sick of purposeful obtuseness being the norm now. get fucking real immediately like we do not have the time for this

[the-beard-of-edward-teach]

Hawaiʻi is currently in the midst of a natural disaster if you didnt know

Apparently there isn’t much news coverage of this outside of the islands

Towns are flooded, homes destroyed and collapsed, roads collapsed, lives at risk, gas leaks from the flood damage

Haleiwa and Waialua are currently evacuated because the 120 year old dam is at risk of bursting

Mind you that damn is owned by Dole. Theyve known about it needing to be fixed for years and years and years. Despite having more than enough money they refuse

The state has been trying to buy it out from them for years so they can fix it, but the sale hasn’t gone through

Keep in mind that the Dole family were the ones who illegally imprisoned Queen Liliuʻokalani and illegally overthrew the monarchy.

If I see another goddamn person say how sad this is for the tourists whose “trips were ruined” and compare a messed up vacation to people losing their homes, belongings, and livelihoods, I’m going to lose my mind

I am so lucky that my family or friend’s are safe and the few whose houses flooded didnt have it too bad, but so so so many were not as fortunate

If you haven’t heard anything about this until now, I suggest looking into it

The sirens didn’t go off until the flood had been going on for hours. Our state government is spending so much money on a fucking monorail we don’t need rather than fixing the infrastructure.

It’s been the locals and Kanaka doing the most to help get people to safety from the start

I don’t really know how to end this

I just need to know people are aware

I need to know people are seeing whats happening

[elodieunderglass]

Thousands evacuated as Hawaii faces worst flooding in 20 years

"Don't take this storm lightly," Hawaii Governor Josh Green warned on Saturday, as more rain is expected on Oahu and Maui.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Enshittificator

Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide. Read more on forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

[minty-shades]

Reblog if you support yuri

You heard right

[klfg]

[source]

[klfg]

🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?

[dataanalyzer]

Link to the cited paper

Why Language Models Hallucinate

Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements

[dykecadence]

periodic reminder that the queer liberation library is an awesome non-regional library you can add on libby to access hundreds of queer titles. NO LIBRARY CARD NEEDED. i just found an audiobook for a pretty new release on there with no waitlist. also everyone use libby for your local library too NOW

Libby Access — Queer Liberation Library

[queerliblib]

free!!! queer!! books!! for anyone, anywhere in the USA!

you can browse the collection here

sign up for a QLL card to check ebooks & audiobooks out

& if you love what we’re doing you can toss us a few bucks here so we can keep doing it <3

[psychotic-gerard]

every time people talk about DIY they talk about it as this scary thing that no-one can learn and I'm here like just message me. do it right now. I can teach you how to do this.

[psychotic-gerard]

heres things you should know

-- if youre starting off on estrogen, you should probably be doing monotherapy. prog can be added at around a year in.

-- if youre on anti-androgen blockers w/o estrogen, you have got to make sure you still have a dominant hormone in your body. it is risky to have both be low. also true for all the trans women out there who've SRS.

-- testosterone esp. as an injectable is piss-easy to get.

-- if you're worried about the veracity of your testosterone, you can always go on any roid bro forum and check it. these things have been independently tested a million times. estrogen is harder. but theres orgs who have done it.

-- injecting yourself is rlly easy.

-- you can take HRT. you should right now.

ASK ME QUESTIONS IF YOU HAVE ANY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.i will be answering with #red says DIY or die.

[flikkerij]

i will do ANYTHING but work on my essay apparently

[semutamusic]

[thedupshadove]

Opera plot: Local Noble realizes that his affections for Pretty Village Girl have a rival in the form of Honest Laborer. Having read enough romances to know that a girl asked to choose between a rich man and a poor man will always pick the poor man, whereas in a love triangle between two rich men it's anyone's game, he decides that his chief object must be to elevate his rival's wealth and status as quickly as possible. What the Compte de Genre-Savie over here forgot to account for, however, was the overwhelming power of the Pygmalion Effect, and now he has to deal with watching two people he's in love with develop ever-stronger feelings for each other. Eventually all of this resolves via...I don't know.

[queenofattolia]

#first of all: ''comte de genre-savie'' is PERFECT. just great. absolutely no notes.#I would love an opera with this exact plot. bonus points if the comte is genuinely genre savvy#he keeps bringing up opera tropes only for the other characters to look at him like he's insane.#the score is diagetic to him; when he points out reoccurring themes or transitions to minor keys#the other characters ask him what the hell he's talking about. the whole chorus gets together to sing about how#comte de genre-savie is going mad. the comte tries to sneak away and keeps getting pulled back in.#I wonder if you could even push it further - have it so that only the comte can speak or 'hear' spoken words;#all other characters communicate in recitativo secco or formally composed songs#then you can have scenes where the comte is speaking but the other character in the scene can't hear him.#this can be played for laughs (the comte tries to order something from a shopkeeper; the shopkeeper walks away as he's talking)#and for dramatic effect (the Honest Laborer is singing a heartfelt duet with the Pretty Village Girl#and neither of them can hear the comte saying 'I love you' in between their lines)#........I am into this actually. I had to convince myself that this wasn't just cyrano de bergerac but no. it isn't. I'm into it.#upon the stage (via @notbecauseofvictories)

[ariaste]

Bonus points if the Comte can also see the stage manager and stagehands. At one point he's like "No listen I'll prove I'm not crazy" and he darts behind a curtain and drags out a woman wearing all black and a headset, with her hair in a messy bun and a clipboard in her hands. He's like, "Tell them I'm not mad." The other characters are like, "🎶HE'S SPEAKING TO GHOSTS 🎶" Stage manager runs off. Comte shades his eyes and peers into the back of the theater where the lighting tech is working. He's like, "Can you bring the house lights up so they can see the audience???" Lighting tech ignores him. The comte is like "FINE!!! It's nearly time for my quickchange, anyway. [to the other characters] WATCH THIS, here's proof, WATCH." And then he stands there stubbornly while the backstage assistants peek in and hiss and gesticulate for him to come get his new costume, and eventually they're forced to scramble out and undress/redress him right there on stage. The other characters are like "GASP!!!!!!! 🎶HE'S A WARLOCK, LOOK HOW HIS CLOTHES FLY FROM HIS BODY BY THE WILL OF HIS UNSEEN DEMON SERVANTS🎶"

Pretty Village Girl and Honest Laborer run off together. Comte falls in love with the stage manager.

[biglawbear]

The Opera That Goes Wrong Show

[farahquotes]

Some people start living at 30. Before that, they were only surviving - doing what was expected, breathing without meaning, moving through years like borrowed clothes that never fit. Some people die at 20. Not in body, but in spirit. Their laughter becomes routine, their dreams shrink, and life turns into a series of obligations they never chose. Some restart at 40. After loss. After heartbreak. After realising that staying alive isn’t the same as living. They gather themselves slowly, like broken glass learning how to reflect light again. Time is a concept humans created - a calendar to make sense of chaos, a clock to convince ourselves there is order. But life doesn’t follow numbers. In the end, it’s never about age. It’s about when a person finally chooses to be alive. ~ farah

[coffeepeople]

I know it goes against everything we've ever been taught, but we do need to put in the work to realize that being ugly is...completely fine. like entirely neutral. so is being conventionally attractive. neutral. not just for other people, but for ourselves. you need to be able to look at yourself and see what you perceive to be physical flaws and go "this is okay, this is the least important part of who I am." It's so beyond okay and normal and fine to be ugly. And I know! Easier said than done. But I do genuinely believe that freedom from looking into the mirror and hating yourself is a worthy goal. Freedom from judging a person immediately based off of their appearance is a worthy goal. Freedom from buying the thousands of products they try and tell you will make you perfect, as if that should be the aim and goal, is a worthy goal.

[draaaaaagon]

HIDE

"too close……"

[r0zeclawz]

wow tumblr you brought back a bunch of the blogs of the transfems you banned for no reason!! impressive work! now you just need to unban like, thousands more of those? come on keep at it you can do it and STOP looking at that "ban even more trannies" button i can tell youre thinking about it

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

[yourunderwaterskies]

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

[aloeverawrites]

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Humanity in War

Learn more about the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Program to train policy professionals, government officials, academics,

Kaya

Kaya is a free humanitarian learning platform which offers hundreds of training opportunities across a range of key topics, including the hu

[pointnclick]

I don't trust anyone. I'm a bad ass lone wolf *eats food someone else grew* *crosses bridge someone else designed and trusts it not to fall* *crosses street in front of 70000lb vehicle cuz there's white lines on the ground telling it to yield*