(Over) thinking it all

A mix of nature, science, writing and whatever shows/pairings I happen to be currently obsessed with. Trans Ally. Author idinathoreau on AO3 and wolfchic011 on FFN/YouTube.

[honigimohr]

[assignedmale]

[redstonedust]

for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.

[sinnegantheworm]

here's my super-quick, easy-to-digest summary that i use when i can't spend more than like 15 seconds on it but need someone to know the basic distinctions:

generative AI - bad evil AI. chatbots, LLMs, image generators, etc. this the one that steals shit.

analytical AI - helpful medical AI. this the one that helps detect cancer early.

game "AI" - fake AI. 100% human created and dictated. this the one that determines game mob behavior n stuff.

[themadqueenmab]

Fun (?) fact: you’re pointing out the difference between creative AI and logical AI.

We’ve had logical AI for a while. That’s what we have in games or math-playing computers and so on. It’s just a logic tree—“Did player do x?” Y/N “If yes, is an NPC within 50 units to them?” Y/N—a series of yes/no questions that the computer runs through to figure out what it’s meant to do. This kind of AI is very lightweight and predictable. The highest level of this AI *can* learn new rules to add to their logic tree—for example, a chess playing robot learns over time that certain openings should be countered with certain strategies—but a logical AI is only ever working towards one narrow goal and won’t deviate.

Creative AI is much more recent, and it’s much more resource-intensive. Instead of giving it a set number of rules and a goal, you feed it a ton of data for it to find patterns in and repeat those patterns. Creative AI with a narrow purpose—example, spotting cancer in mammograms—are so useful because you can give it a very narrow but robust data set that makes it very good at spotting patterns in new images that resemble that data (like a new mammogram.)

Generative AI is creative AI, but without any specialty. You’ve basically taken the entire Internet, stuffed it into this AI model, and told it to just *make* things. It’s unbelievably inefficient, requires a ton of power, and doesn’t really give you anything better than a mediocre averaged-out product of other things with similar keywords you gave to it. This makes the AI very unpredictable, because there was no clear direction in the data it’s given and now it’s prone to pulling unexpected patterns and ‘behaving’ erratically.

Creative AI isn’t ontologically evil—it’s just a tool that works significantly better if it’s developed with a clear purpose, and it’s only used for that clear purpose. The massive models you see like GPT and Claude are Like That because their developers are trying to make them everything to everyone.

[depsidase]

[assignedmale]

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

i was training a young person at work, and she referred to sexual assault as "SA" out loud, and i immediately was like, "no, it's sexual assault, call it what it is," bc idgaf if the algorithm overlords have taught y'all that you should fear direct language, how tf do any of you expect to ever address real issues with any amount of seriousness if you can't even say the words? imagine an advocate looking a sexual assault survivor in the eyes and asking "did he grape you?" it's absolutely fucking absurd, but these young interns and new hires are coming into an environment where we deal with survivors of all different kinds of abuse, and they're coming with the mindset that the words are as bad as the actions, and that makes them shitty at the job and look juvenile af

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

say the fucking words, guys. just say the goddamn words before i go insane!!!

[depsidase]

[do-not-u-dare]

Stole this from somewhere but i think it’s appropriate

[iesika]

“Pratchett went back to older throwaway jokes (like dwarves being apparently unisex) and used them as metaphors to discuss social change, racial assimilation, and other complex issues, while reexamining the species he’d thrown in at the margins of his world simply because they existed at the margins of every other fantasy universe. If goblins and orcs and trolls could think, then why were they always just there to be slaughtered by the heroes? And if the heroes slaughtered sentient beings en masse, how heroic exactly were they? It was a long overdue start on redressing issues long swept under the rug by a parade of Tolkien successors who never thought of anyone green and slimy as anything but a notch on the protagonist’s sword, and much of the urgency in Pratchett’s last few books seemed to be related to them. ‘There’s only one true evil in the world,’ he said through his characters. ‘And that’s treating people like they were things.’ And in the last of his ‘grown-up’ Discworld books, that idea is shouted with the ferocity of those who have only a few words left and want to make them count. Goblins are people. Golems are people. Dwarves are people, and they do not become any less people because they decide to go by the gender they know themselves to be instead of the one society forces on them. Even trains might be people, and you’ll never know one way or the other unless you ask them, because treating someone like they’re a person and not a thing should be your default. And the only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don’t even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.”

— John Seavey, The Evolution of the Disc (via liquidlightandrunningtrees)

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[caw-zrs6]

The reason why people weren't casting is because for something like this, they're waiting for the right moment to come. It's like in the first Incredibles movie for instance, where Bob was holding that claw and was telling Helen to press a button on a remote, but she refused to do it until the robot they were fighting got close enough for the claw to actually hit it.

[montereybayaquarium]

Harmful changes to Endangered Species Act

Now, more changes to the Endangered Species Act by the current administration continue to attack crucial parts of the law to protect habitat and newly listed species.

These changes prioritize harmful development over science-based management and make it harder to put species on a path to recovery.

A healthy marine ecosystem is essential to support biodiversity and save endangered species. We need an Endangered Species Act and management guided by science and expertise that puts the environment first.

Sign up for ocean action emails to learn more about what you can do to support endangered species:

Sign up for ocean action emails

Get the latest ocean news, sustainable living tips, and simple ways to take action for a healthier ocean.

And read our statement here:

Monterey Bay Aquarium denounces Trump-Vance administration weakening…

New regulations undo core elements crucial for protecting vulnerable species and their habitats.

[assignedmale]

15 July 1944

[subjectsix]

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[subjectsix]

glad this post is resonating with the local populace fr

[birdandmoon]

Heat waves.

[deadgenerations]

in more pleasant news: this year is seeing the biggest humpback migration in Australian history, bigger than it was PRE whaling. That's right, there are more humpbacks migrating off the coast of Australia than there were BEFORE industrial whaling started.

A huge, fat W for environmentalists and Greenies. what an achievement

[lumsel]

we did it! we saved the fucking whales!!!!

[the-tao-of-fandom]

These whales were hunted to 150 individuals. Now there are 50,000 of them

Once hunted almost to extinction, the population of humpback whales currently migrating down Australia's east coast has bounced back and is

Further info for those interested

[pnwnativeplants]

Environmental activism works!!! If they tell you its hopeless they're lying and/or selling some shit!!!

[traegorn]

[depsidase]

[kuzkuza]

[moniquill]

No guys, I need to stop and talk about something in this movie and how fucking revolutionary it was; something that I haven’t seen in a movie before or since.

This is a movie about a kid who leaves her birth family.

Not a kid who find that they have a secret lineage or something that allows them to find their ‘true family’ - this is a movie about a kid whose true birth family is made up of bad people. So she gets out. And that is played as the right thing to do. She isn’t punished for it or made to feel bad about ‘abandoning her family’. There isn’t an underlying ‘but they’re your family and you have to love them’ or ‘they’re your family and they love you even if they don’t show it well or do hurtful things’ message of the kind that I see OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER in media. Matilda gets out and lives happily ever after because of it.

We need a million more movies like this to counter the metric shit ton of movies that directly counter this message.

[glamaphonic]

 #sometimes the family you start with isn’t a good one #but you can find your own #family is not absolute #blood is not absolute

[marzipanandminutiae]

not to mention, Miss Honey is an abuse survivor herself (and in the book, she’s only 23 years old)

they both got out. they both became each other’s happy ending.

[assignedmale]