[kyri45]

I'm so normal about this movie that I did this in 3 days with a total of 10 hours of sleep. If you know this song you know it s time to bring out the tissues.

Song is The Cave by Mumford and Sons

[raccoonmilf]

Hmm. My ceiling in my living room that I haven’t been in since Dashcon is collapsing and there is an alarming amount of mold. I believe something bad has occurred, I do not know what to do about this situation because it is not raccoon related.

[raccoonmilf]

side note, but i feel like this is a good example of how autism manifests in seemingly "low support needs" individuals. I can get a permit that is very hard to obtain, go to another country where nobody I work with speaks the language I do, hold myself together while I kneel beside a dead raccoon to try to determine cause of death, write reports for institutions to mitigate risk to raccoons, etc etc etc. but then the moment something like this happens I freeze up and curl in a ball and have no idea what to do because I have no money or skill to fix it myself and i'm scared of the textures. And also literally cannot speak on the phone ever.

[raccoonmilf]

No, it's not inappropriate. It is a really common feeling for a lot of autistic people society deems as "low support needs."

There's a lot of frustration and shame in it, too, because of the way the world as a whole treats us. I think it is rooted in Aspie supremacy or whatever (internalized and external), but there is so much focus on the so called magical, wonderful abilities autism gives you (in my case, raccoons/costume design), that when you exhibit autistic traits more commonly associated with "high support needs" individuals, people automatically go "ummm I think you are faking/lazy/stupid/weaponizing incompetence/blah blah blah because I have seen you do [xyz thing that people find incredibly impressive], so you should easily be able to do [current thing]!" When that is not how autism works. Additionally, I don't think most people realized that a lot of "low support needs" autistic folks aren't infact all that "low support needs," it's just that they don't have people able to meet those support needs, so they just struggle. And because nobody is there to see them struggle, then those struggles don't exist.

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[the-murmuration-project]

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

[optionalcausality]

My fear is the combo of "I am clicking on a button to tell me a made-up answer instead of spending any amount of time and effort to look this up" and "The output is Mostly Fine so let's just put what it says without making corrections/edits".

Because they do go together. Once someone has adopted the attitude of "it's Mostly Fine", especially if they're doing this for time-saving purposes, then they stop reading it to check if it actually matches the assignment.

I expect that in about fifty years, there's going to be a human-curated list of the publications from this time period that must be corroborated by a second source because the information therein was partly generated by the bullshit machine whose output cannot be trusted.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[limnaia]

For those who aren't getting the subtext here: cow's teats are fucking filthy, covered in mud and straw and all kinds of stuff. They also sometimes step on them when they're getting up from sleeping. Best case scenario, they just wipe mud from their hooves on it. Worst case, the hoof cuts the teat and wipes mud in it, so your milk is getting a bit of blood in it, if your farmhands don't spot it in the milking run.

None of these are things you want in your milk. Also, whether or not the milk is safe to drink, you still need to milk the cow, which still requires a milking machine (hopefully, if the cow hasn't hurt herself too badly) and while farmers do their best, a cowshed/milking run is not a sterile environment. The cows just piss and shit all over the run and your farmhands have to learn to dodge, or just put up with the fact that some splashback got in their hair for the rest of the day.

Everything that has been in a cowshed ideally needs to be pasteurised after. Up to and including the farmhands. Cows are massive, clumsy girls who don't know where their tits are, cause they can't see the fucking things. They cannot be trusted with hygiene, or food safe environments. They can barely be trusted with cow safe environments.

[lioryaakov]

[malte-laurids]

I’m so sorry for this yall!

[abislwise]

campus antisemitism got you down? let me introduce you to the TITLE VI COMPLAINT.

This is not foolproof, but it's how I killed SJP on my campus.

See, the thing everyone on campus fucking forgets is that "Israeli" is a NATIONAL ORIGIN, and that's a protected category under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which like... is wildly in danger in this day and age but that's not the point. The point is that anything that receives federal funds is vulnerable to a Title VI complaint, and you know who receives federal funds?

COLLEGES. UNIVERSITIES. EVEN PRIVATE ONES. Because you know what counts as federal funding?

STUDENT.

LOANS.

That's right: if your institution offers federal student loans, YOU CAN MAKE A TITLE VI COMPLAINT.

And because a Title VI complaint threatens a school's federal funding? They do NOT fuck around with them. They won't always be able to tell you the exact action they take (in fact, they'll hardly ever be able to tell you), but they WILL have to take action if your local band of antisemites is posting anti-Israel crap.

And how do you MAKE one? Why, through this extremely handy portal! But your school should also have a process for making one, and if you have a diversity office or something akin to that, you can also have fun freaking them out by walking in and saying, "Hi, I'm here to make a Title VI complaint." Usually this will cause people to get managers. Federal discrimination complaints are a big deal.

DO NOT get bullied out of making your complaint. DO NOT let someone file it for you. Fill out whatever thing there is yourself, and let them know you've done so. And get a copy if you can.

[chernozemm]

tfw you forget your steam-powered alien roommate is now independently mobile and can (will) drag your ass to bed whether you like it or not

[pkpkhnttmi]

vent & comfort

[entrailer]

was reminded of this line recently & it cracked me up. rocky essentially saying "we HAVE no boundaries ❤" and grace waves his hand dismissively like Yeah yeahhhh

[kaomojiloser]

after the whole gravity incident…

[edgebug]

don't worry, that lil guy will keep trying until he gets it right

insp!!! :)

[homunculus-argument]

God will see you at the lowest point of your life, and say "what the fuck I thought I killed that thing." But you skitter too fast and you are too creepy.

[skvernii]

Disheveled hair, vivid memories —

To my last post, huhuhu 💍

[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

[xinakwans]

to you he's a sex object to me he's a chronically ill white dog

[captain-price-returns]

oh no they’re going to start calling democrats the same thing they’ve been calling democrats for 20 years now

[hotvampireadjacent]

[thewellofastarael]

"Here’s a trick I learned during the Obama presidency for handling certain types of political labels. Take, as an example, the Tea Party claim that Obama is a Communist. Don’t take the word of the person making the claim (Tea Partiers). Don’t rely on the rebuttal of the target (Obama), because that will just be dismissed. Go to the group itself (Communists) and ask them. Ask an actual Communist if Obama is a comrade and see how they answer. Watch as they laugh at you, then explain in great detail how they wish there was a Communist in the White House, but here’s a long and exhaustive list of why that just isn’t so. Now apply this logic to the claim that Hillary is pretty much the same as a Republican. Ask an actual Republican if they think Hillary Clinton is one of them. Watch them laugh, and then explain in the same exhausting detail why that just isn’t so. Some of them might concede that she’s better than Trump, but that’s not the same thing. Finally, go ask a White Supremacist if Trump is one of them. As they excitedly explain how Trump is the guy they’ve been waiting for all these years, and how he’s really empowered their movement, use this to guide how you will be voting in November."

Source: a 2016 facebook posts by Craig Enan, since then deleted (OG link here)

[enverlame]