Just a dove, chillin in a tree

Jay. 24. Aus. I get really excited over cats, reptiles and games.

[ebb-is-learning]

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

[fergal1cious]

[patheticperipatetic]

DuckDuckGo now lets you hide AI-generated images in search results | TechCrunch

DuckDuckGo's new search feature comes as the internet is being flooded with AI-generated slop.

The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, including the ‘nuclear’ list, provided by uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist,” DuckDuckGo said in a post on X. “While it won’t catch 100% of AI-generated results, it will greatly reduce the number of AI-generated images you see.

Left: AI filter is off Right: AI filter is on

[rhetoricandlogic]

Another tip for DDG - if you want to permanently get rid of DDG's AI features (which you can turn off in settings, but only temporarily) - for now you can just use noai.duckduckgo.com as your search engine. Works as advertised in the name.

[arianod]

[decomposedmaw]

Chillin’ on the Bridge

[draconym]

How did you come to aquire Ripley? (You guys seem to have a good relationship but I like want to make sure they're owned ethically as an exotic animal and all that. Sorry if you've answered this before </3)

The short answer is: I bought him.

Back in 2008 when I started looking to adopt a large parrot, there wasn't much info easily available about caring for birds in captivity. Most of the information I had, I got from books and my local bird keeping club. I wanted to rescue a bird, but there weren't any rescues in my area. There was, however, a woman who lived very close to me, who attended the bird keeping club at the library, and who had a pair of African greys she was planning to breed.

In 2009 I got to meet Ripley as a fledgling (as well as his family) and watch him grow up. When I took him home about half a year later, he was pretty sure I had kidnapped him (understandable). At 23 I was pretty sure I could handle a large parrot because I had lived with lovebirds and cockatiels and read a lot of books. Ha ha. Little did I know, I had just adopted a creature that vets would describe as "extremely strong willed and sensitive" (a bastard).

I think breeding parrots for sale at all is a thorny ethical issue. I love Ripley and I think he's thriving, but I don't think most species of large parrots should be bred to be pets at all. All the birds I've had since I got Ripley have been rescues, and I don't have plans to adopt any more. They're a ton of work and they live forever. If Ripley and I are lucky, we might be together for another 50 years.

In other news, yesterday Ripley broke his 356 day streak of not biting anyone because I dared to suggest to him that he join me on the couch instead of roaming the kitchen unsupervised.

[draconym]

Baby dinosaur pictures from before I met him

[mbari-blog]

Quality time with a squid mum 🦑

For decades, marine biologists assumed that all squids laid their eggs in clusters on the seafloor, where the eggs developed and hatched without any help from their parents. However, MBARI scientists discovered that some female deep-sea squid, like this Gonatus onyx, brood their eggs by carrying them between their arms until the young hatch and swim away. ⁠ ⁠ Gonatus females will have approximately 2,000 to 3,000 eggs in a sheath between their arms for as long as nine months. During this time, they are unable to feed and must rely on stored fats from previous meals. This observation of the first known parental care behavior by squid was also an important discovery made possible by the use of MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles.

[madmonksandmaenads]

My ethereal Mama

[spencerthespacer-deactivated202]

[funny-tik-toks]

[strawberry-crocodile]

a lot of scares get like a second of reaction before the "oh -_-" moment but dude legit spent a solid ten seconds ready to be killed by a dragon

[esmeblaise]

thinking about character specific speech bubbles

[draconym]

I love the baby Ripley pictures, it really looks like you adopted some kind of weird dinosaur

I did

[quantum-dragon]

[girlgrimer]

hmpf

[brucebocchi]

the snirker

[theseventeensteps]

obsessed with how fixable society is, on a structural level.

obsessed with how all you need to do is throw money at public education and eliminate most standardized testing and you will start getting smarter, more engaged, kinder adults. obsessed with how giving people safe housing, reliable access to good food, and decent wages dramatically reduces drug overdoses and gun violence. obsessed with how much people actually want to get together and fix infrastructure, invent new ways of helping each other, and create global ways of living sustainably once you give them livable pay to do so. obsessed with how tracking diseases, developing medicines, and improving public health becomes so much easier when you just make healthcare free at point of use.

obsessed with how easy it all becomes, if we can just figure out how to wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders.

[theseventeensteps]

i've lived in four different cities in my adult life and talked to literally tens of thousands of people about politics and the change they want to see in the world and the overwhelming majority of them wanted life to be better, happier, easier for everyone, and dreamed of that world. the only people who didn't think that way were A) really obviously in need of mental/medical care, or B) rich.

wanting universal free healthcare, well-funded public education, and social support for all people is the most unbelievably normie opinion that exists, even among people who have lots of bad or misguided opinions about other things. when you feel alone, know that the reason you feel that way is billions of dollars are being spent to obscure the fact that you are in the majority.

[viejospellejos]

HEY.

[garbagefrire]

Y'all are missing the best part.

[e-rose]

[tpwrtrmnky]

This doesn't apply to me because my strategy only fails when I don't have perfect control over my immediate surroundings and routines! Hah!

[ruinedchildhood]

[stream]

[niuniente]

Also

sflix.to (movies, TV series, also rare international movies)

hianime.to (anime only)

kissanimes.et (anime)

kimcartoon.com.co (cartoon series and movies)

www.iq.com (Asian dramas)

[ineffablecho]

Netflix has gotten way too greedy.

[ruinedchildhood]

[quasi-normalcy]

(x)

[quasi-normalcy]

Controversial opinion: If they're not going to turn out to town halls, you need to turn out to their homes and offices.

[jv]

It's called "escrache", and the Argentinians invented it: you just organise demonstrations, noisy ones, lengthy ones, in front of the private residences of politicians.