[emmaziadarcy]

EMMA D'ARCY House Of The Dragon S3 World Premiere

[homunculus-argument]

As my "I am aware that this is insane and irrational and therefore nobody can criticise me" of the day, I get irrationally pissed off by people who suck at eating.

"uguuu waah why am I feeling so yucky ;____; no I did eat today, I ate a slice of dry toast 15 hours ago, that's solid so that counts as a meal" bitch shut the fuck up if you hate chewing and swallowing that much get yourself a goddamn feeding tube. actually no I know your address, I'm coming over and I'm grabbing a garden hose from the hardware store on the way. I've never installed one before but we're about to learn together.

[homunculus-argument]

Like as a clarification this is because even though I am rationally aware that there's plenty of reasons for someone to not have hunger cues or otherwise just be bad at eating, I am emotionally incapable of comprehending it. I experience hunger as a very distinct and obvious physically and emotionally unpleasant experience. Avoiding it is a natural instinct just like pulling my hand off a hot stove.

So witnessing someone not have this kind of self-preservation ability feels like seeing someone sit down on a hot stovetop and just. fucking sit there. Steam and smoke coming out. Just sitting there with a blank expression and going "ugh why do I feel so gross, I cannot identify what this unpleasant feeling is. Maybe I'm about to catch a cold or maybe my horoscopes are in the wrong order."

BITCH GET YOUR ASS OFF THE STOVE.

[lastoneout]

Sorry we really went from free the nipple, take back the night, slut walks, and ending gender/sex segregation in sports being fucking milquetoast feminism 101 concepts to fucking girl dinner and "I just worry about fairness if we let trans girls play against cis ones" and "it was right of that woman to call the cops on a black man for existing near here in public during the day time because men are all violent monsters" and "radical feminism isn't transphobic we just need to kill all men including trans ones those oppressive traitors" and I will legit never be able to be normal about it. What the FUCK happened. I'd say I wonder what the feminists of my youth would say about this but I'm one and lemme tell ya I want to throw up. Go fucking read bell hooks or do something else useful please because all of this learned helplessness, gender essentialism, and transphobia dressed up as feminism is actively holding us back.

[toast1862]

like it just doesnt make any economic sense. replacing human labor with ai only makes sense if the output is as good or better and cheap as free. but just the fact that you have to build the massive data centers at all-- especially that gpus go bad in just a few years, but even if they didn't, the facility itself is going to be a big expense-- means it cant be cheap as free. they were banking on an uber type situation where they could crank up the prices once people switched to their business model, but the trade is literally "this will be cheaper than using human labor" so if it's not cheaper than human labor then people will just hire people again. and it's not even as good or reliable as a person. so while ai is "here to stay" in the sense that the technology exists and will find its niches, probably people are going to be sexting with them forever just maybe on local models, the current business model cannot survive and never possibly could.

it's all desperation. i do really believe ed zitron's rot economy idea, that the tech sector has been searching for a new internet or iphone or whatever that blows up and changes the world and they get to keep the profits so they'll uplift any garbage (hence nfts and the metaverse) to try and astroturf that. and relatedly, i think nvidia and the cloud compute companies and the ai companies are just passing the same dollar back and forth to create big numbers that paper over how bad the economy really is. it's all an attempt to keep the infinite growth hack going.

like i actually think all of the problems with ai are problems that already existed that are just getting a huge spotlight on them because of the massive reckless expansion and apocalyptic marketing. like people are cheating on essay assignments? no shit, they used to use fiver and other cheating services. higher ups are devaluing and trying to get rid of creatives? yeah, we've been talking about how vfx artists need to unionize for over a decade, especially people working on marvel movies. people with mental health problems are turning to the internet instead of getting support or medical assistance and end up hurting themselves as a result? yup, especially when it comes to like eating disorders, there are some really awful places that will validate you into the grave. data centers use a lot of energy and water? yeah, they also did that before they were used for ai, they do that for youtube and twitch, and tech in general is a massive source of pollution. politicians arent listening to their constituents' needs and demands, instead handing money and special privileges to corporations that wont keep up their end of the bargain? yeah, i remember the public transit proposals cancelled to hand money instead to elon and his terrible tunnels. like it all already existed, they're just doing it so much so quickly that people can actually see it in front of them

[tsarina-anadyomene]

it really is quite bad for your military to have an image of itself as a warrior class. what you really want is for your soldiers to think of themselves as boring professionals who will fill out a report form if someone gets a little too warrior ethos out there

[gsot]

[drmajalis]

[thestuffedalligator]

Dragons are fireless until they undergo the Hroom, the traditional draconic ceremony where a fledgling dragon will go out into the world and make a bargain with a spirit of elemental fire to live in their soul in a state of mutual symbiosis. The spirit receives shelter and nourishment, while the dragon receives a source of elemental fire, which it can only now use to defend itself.

In many draconic cultures, the Hroom marks a dragon’s coming of age, a time to recognize that a dragon is now of a proper age to hold a weapon and defend itself. Some dragons believe that it is only by bonding with an elemental spirit that a dragon has a soul, and that a dragon is only a whole dragon when it has both the mortal shell and the inner spark.

There has been a backlash to this in recent centuries, of course. Fledglings these days are going out and making bargains with all kinds of things. This is usually spirits of elemental lightning and ice, but more than one dragon has come back to their clutch with a fairly bewildered witch.

[thestuffedalligator]

#Does the witch live inside the dragon's soul after...?

Metaphorically, yes. One dragon had married the witch she brought back to her clutch, and she said that meant their two souls had become one, which was basically the same thing.

The other dragons in her brood said it didn’t work that way, but she was able to breathe pure magic afterwards, so it at least worked that way for her.

[partywithponies]

Fascinating how what's considered feminine and what's considered masculine can change over time. The rebranding of being a horse girl into being a stereotypical feminine girly trait needs to be studied.

[partywithponies]

Look at classic children's novels. As recently as the 50s and early 60s, being obsessed with horses as a girl was depicted as strange and tomboyish, and the very concept of being obsessed with horses from early childhood and loving toy horses and desperately wanting your own horse being a "little girl thing" and not a "little boy thing" would send someone from the 1800s and earlier into a coma.

[partywithponies]

There's maybe a point to be made here somewhere about how when keeping and riding horses stopped being necessary to the functioning of society and became a more "frivolous" thing, it was rapidly rebranded as silly and girly and for women, but what do I know.

[dizzyghoast]

i wrote a paper in my masculinity studies class in college about this exact phenomenon, specifically about how high heeled shoes started as a practical way for Persian cavalry to keep their feet on their stirrups, then likely due to that association, became a popular fashion item and status symbol among the upper classes of Europe, before the Great Male Renunciation of the 18th-19th centuries, when men started shunning opulence in favor of utility, leaving them as a fashion item for women instead.

I've joked that the two genders are Aesthetic and Utility before but thats just kinda the case

[cpericardium]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Jeff was right

[scifi0lver]

One of the Facebook pages I like is "The Man Who Has It All." Here are some of the posts I like the most.

[teaboot]

I was debating pre- and post- smartphone existentialism with an older gentleman today and he stopped part way through and said “Why are you a security guard? Why aren’t you teaching this at some college somewhere?” And I didn’t know what to say so I went with “Well I used to make art but nobody pays an artist”

[teaboot]

I want to invoke thought and wonder and introspection and encourage the passions of every soul I meet forever and ever and dig until I find the glorious potential for creation and experience and joy in every single one but unfortunately I must pay rent and so I stand, a meat shield, an NPC with unlockable dialogue

[oojamaflip-whatchamacallit]

#capitalism brain tells you that anyone interesting must fight to the top of their interest#and precludes the possibility of everyone everyone everyone already being interesting

[partywithponies]

Fascinating how what's considered feminine and what's considered masculine can change over time. The rebranding of being a horse girl into being a stereotypical feminine girly trait needs to be studied.

[partywithponies]

Look at classic children's novels. As recently as the 50s and early 60s, being obsessed with horses as a girl was depicted as strange and tomboyish, and the very concept of being obsessed with horses from early childhood and loving toy horses and desperately wanting your own horse being a "little girl thing" and not a "little boy thing" would send someone from the 1800s and earlier into a coma.

[partywithponies]

There's maybe a point to be made here somewhere about how when keeping and riding horses stopped being necessary to the functioning of society and became a more "frivolous" thing, it was rapidly rebranded as silly and girly and for women, but what do I know.

[anik]

i love this guy

[starg2zerlion]

Good rule of thumb is the more people of different backgrounds you know, the harder it becomes to dehumanize them, so its a really good thing to meet people from different backgrounds, and anyone telling you that people from x culture or y country you really shouldnt interact with probably dont have your best interest in mind

[schakira]

the commander's silly rabbit..........

[cyphir-spacerobot]

Victor Frankenstein after achieving the impossible and building a fucking person from scraps of the dead: Oh god, ew, ew it's ugly! Yucky! Yucky! Gross! Ew! Ew! Yucky! Yucky! Gross! Ew!

[koiagain]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[funny-tik-toks]