A Coptic magical spell (late 6th-early 7thc. CE) for obtaining a beautiful singing voice. Written for Severos, son of loanna, it invokes Davithe Eleleth, the seven archangels, and the Holy Father
Xuebing Du
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
NASA
hello vonnie

if i look back, i am lost

Love Begins
EXPECTATIONS

shark vs the universe

Andulka
The Bowery Presents
taylor price

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

roma★

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todays bird
Cookie Run:Kingdom Official!

Game Changer & Make Some Noise
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@katiezookat
A Coptic magical spell (late 6th-early 7thc. CE) for obtaining a beautiful singing voice. Written for Severos, son of loanna, it invokes Davithe Eleleth, the seven archangels, and the Holy Father
So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.
However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”
Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”
The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.
And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.
And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.
Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.
frodo getting criticized for decades for not doing much / not being a hero compared to sam is fitting when you consider mental health and strength is often trivialized. frodo carried the most dangerous and insidious item in middle earth for YEARS. ancient beings (elves, gandalf, etc) were taunted and tempted by it. boromir was corrupted within weeks without even touching it. men and hobbits turned against their brethren for it. killed for it. and frodo, with a wound from a morgul knife, bore it’s weight when no one else could. had it been anyone else, middle earth would have fallen.
no, he couldn’t have done it without his samwise. but isn’t that a lesson in itself?
just checked in on the colony of finches outside my nurse's office and they've developed beaks of the perfect shape and size for administering subcutaneous injections
My beloved came up with our ballots and said, “Time to vote! It’s a mitzvah!”
“Filling in bubbles is a mitzvah…?” I asked in tired perplexity.
“No, taking part in the democratic process is.”
“That makes more sense.”
As I filled in my bubbles Korben kept coming up and trying to paw and interrupt what I was doing and I had to keep telling him, “Stop interrupting my mitzvah!”
Eventually my wife came and picked him up to distract him while I finished and I mused, “I know theres no devil in Judaism but if there were it would be Korben because he really wanted to prevent this mitzvah.”
He failed. We have successfully voted this day.
^ A demon who wants anarchy to reign.
Okay... so this is right up my alley. More weird whimsy and quirk in the romance genre... and more jaded suffer-no-fools women, instead of the creepy age-gaps, please and thank you
I WILL WATCH THE FUCK OUT OF THIS! Monster romance books prepared me for thiissss!
just FYI it's based on a short story called The Wicker Husband which I read here despite the small print because I could only find the opening elsewhere (the place it was originally published online is gone, but the author, Ursula Wills-Jones, says she hopes to see it in print soon!)
Oooooooh, this is why I saw a social media post yesterday that was just a picture of the local all-wicker-everything store on the corner of Cretin and Marshall with just the caption, "This store is about to become incredibly popular."
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
some recent very good video essays <3
James Baldwin and the Annihilation of Gender by Anansi's Library - stunning essay about gender, sexuality, and Blackness in the works of James Baldwin, and Moonlight (2016).
astronomy has a colonialism problem by Dr. Fatima - Libyan-American and former physicist Dr Fatima discusses the links between colonialism, scientific academia, and the Palestinian liberation movement.
Saltburn: The Tumblr-ification of Cinema by Broey Deschanel - fun essay on how Saltburn is a cheap rip-off of The Untalented Mr Ripley and refuses to admit it, and how such pastiche is a growing problem.
How Shirley Jackson exposed the horror of home life by Books n Cats
This Video Isn't Just About Taylor Swift. It's About You. by Alexander Avilla - a juggernaut of an essay about how so much of Taylor Swift's success is just about the weaponisation of whiteness in marketing.
Time Travelling While Black by Aishyo - comparative essay about media that portrays Black characters who time travel.
Why We Can’t Build Better Cities by Philosophy Tube - Abigail Thorn investigates the ideological links between gentrification and the 15-minute-city conspiracy theory.
Why Sci-fi Can't Fix Its White Savior Problem by Princess Weekes - an essay about how white supremacy and white feminism is baked into science fiction.
Eminem and the White Rapper Problem by F.D Signifier - a retrospective on Eminem's impact on rap, for better and worse.
Why YouTubers Hold Microphones Now by Tom Nicholas - a fascinating piece about how the slow corporatisation of YouTibe has impacted content creators' aesthetics over time, and how this is also a wider trend on the internet.
Repost from @girlsschoolbooks on TikTok
Totally normal for a legitimate for-profit company to refuse to reclaim or stop running their products even after they're no longer being paid to do so. I'm sure it's very normal to just keep running your service for free when your contract's been terminated. Spending money to continue running cameras that supposedly no one is looking at is definitely not an indicator they are just run by the federal government to spy on everyone and only a wacko conspiracy theorist would think so.
kitty perfect weight for picking up for cuddles! kitty very Soft and warm and will purr comfortably in your arms. Pick up kitty. no problems ever when picking up kitty because good weight and size for picking up after surgery.
SORRY, MY SEXY TOPSTITCHING I GUESS
"The men who do not lower their gaze as is commanded by our faith, but instead steal second and third glances; the men who hiss the vulgarest of obscenities and when called out, blame their behaviors on your clothes, your smile or lack thereof, your pretty eyes, your very existence." - The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: Shannon Chakraborty
I feel that "lawn care" as promoted in the USA can be considered some kind of pseudoscience.
It doesn't have the conspiracy-theory-adjacent qualities of virtually every other "pseudoscience," which makes me hesitant to call it that, but the theory and method of it is still full of totally unsupported junk.
Where do I start?
I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.
Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.
The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.
Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.
Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.
Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.
The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.
Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.
"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.
Let me make this very clear: It is fully impossible to "solve" the problem of plants popping up in your yard that aren't your one favored variety of grass. You will be buying herbicides for the rest of your life, and it will get worse, not better, because willy-nilly use of herbicides is leading to plants developing herbicide resistance faster than we can come up with new herbicides.
@kidpixdeluxe-4
From my limited knowledge of ecology, "but this is what natives have been saying for YEARS" basically sums up literally all work that has been done with ecology in north america
"You know what's harder than Getting Better? Living Like That" is just the thesis for my whole shit going on right now honestly. You know what's harder than doing my physical therapy? Hurting All The Time. You know what's harder than addressing my gender dysphoria? Hurting All The Time
I'm Doing The Hard Thing and it's *easier* than how I was living before. If you make yourself feel better you will have more energy to spend on Getting Better. Nice inch nails - the upward spiral. Crawl out of your grave Thursday
HOLY SHIT I JIST SAW A TRAILER FOR CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE
I thought the movie was dead!