do no harm

but take no shit

[homunculus-argument]

The thing about scientific research is that 90% of the labyrinth is dead ends. And therefore, every single dead end that we can verify is important information. You really do need to make a peer-reviewed study to prove that no number of vehicular accidents has a statistically meaningful positive impact on bone cancer, just in case your moron cousin Greg decides to get rich by offering people bone cancer cure tours where you drive a monster truck off a cliff.

[homunculus-argument]

Name it "No Shit, Nobel".

[carriesthewind]

On the subject about parents needing to control their child's reading and invade their privacy in order to "protect" them from "inappropriate material:

Until I was in....college? At least? The vast, vast majority of the books I read were either a) assigned by my school or b) (the vast majority of my reading) provided to me by my mother.

My mom is a librarian. She filled our rooms with books, picked especially for us. She pointed out books on the shelves in our home library (separate from our bedroom shelves) that she thought we would like. She bought us books for birthdays, Christmas, and just stacks of recommendations. She once paid me $10 to read one of the Cirque Du Freak books because she said I needed "to be exposed to bad literature."

She respected my privacy in room, didn't go through my belongings. She explicitly pointed out to us that she wouldn't know if we took a particular book of the shelf, as long as we returned it, if we didn't want her to know we were reading it. She purposely brought us books that she didn't care for herself, because she thought we might find them valuable or enjoyable.

And if we wanted to read something she thought might upset or disturb us, she would explain why. She wouldn't stop us from reading it - just ask us to check in with her, to talk through it.

And so when I read something that upset or disturbed me, I would go to her. She would listen and talk through it with me.

If she said she didn't think I would like something, or that a book might disturb me, or that she thought I should wait until I was older, I listened to her.

She didn't need restrictions or control to protect me. Because she proved I could trust her.

Controlling kids is never about "protecting" them. It's just about control.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[mudwerks]

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

well…darn

[flippyspoon]

like to charge reblog to cast financial ruin of the AI industry 🔮

[egberts]

[gidguard]

[youre-only-gay-once]

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

[purgaytorysupremacy]

if you’re wondering why spellcheck and grammar check is worse now, it’s because they replaced it with AI! 🥰

now, instead of maintaining a comprehensive, nuanced, and human-maintained encyclopedia by which to check your document, they have switched to an AI that just compares what you’ve written to what other people write in, say, Google Docs, and use the most commonly used iteration.

ever have it change something like “all intents and purposes” to “all intensive purposes” or “should’ve” to “should of”? that’s why!

people make the same spelling and grammar mistakes so often, AI thinks that’s the way you say it because it is a PATTERN DETECTOR and cannot THINK let alone use language.

[youre-only-gay-once]

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

[loveandragethelikesofwhich]

My dumb super power of "knowing how to spell shit" is coming in clutch once again.

[transxfiles]

you may notice i use the phrase "my beloved" frequently. this is because i am in love with the world and everything in it. hope this clears things up <3

[transxfiles]

girl help the pessimists found me

[phoenixichi]

"girl help i am staunchly refusing to realise my own naivete in a world almost completely made up of things that couldnt care less about me or are actively exploiting me"

[tiefling-enjoyer]

[that-house]

Girl help the pessimists are mistaking an inherently meaningless universe for an inhumane and joyless one rather than recognizing the opportunity to make one’s own meaning and joy and to spread those things to others

[notallsandmen]

Girl, this is a better representation of Nietzsche’s attitude towards nihilism than most undergrad philosophy essays

magical girl shows really did snap when they assigned personality traits based off the members colors

[gayhex]

pink - commander and the leader. probably really nice and sweet

blue - probably very close to pink, is either 100 iq smarty pants but shy or very tough and cool

yellow/orange - very happy and positive. can vary from being newbie of the group to be older and mature, probably known as the beautiful one

purple - mysterious, usually starts off as a rival or joins the group later, but is definitely known to the members as another MG. Probably has a softer side they don’t show

[squeezemetillipop]

Don’t forget green - more mature and very reliable

[kuramamanamahamanamana]

Red - Mad

[metaphoricalicecream]

[maybemoonbeams]

okay but this implies the existence of a lost pink teletubby. a fallen leader too painful to talk about anymore

[starwarsepisodeiv]

tubby custard.

[maybemoonbeams]

[unicornmitteneater]

where….where are the notes……

[piesandswords]

in the tubby custard with the pink teletubby

[mosticonicposts]

certified iconic post

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[iluvsatc]

[pagliahater]

[art-is-art-is-art]

Chekhov wrote it before Camus

[andysambcrg]

- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

[memecucker]

Chuck Jones is the best counterexample to “the curtains are just blue” because you would not believe the amount of thought and art theory he put into his silly little cartoons

[memecucker]

I need to dig out my Chuck Jones books but one time he was talking about the Wile E Coyote gag where he runs off a cliff and continues running for a little bit before noticing there’s no ground underneath him and then turns to the camera and holds up a sign saying “Help!” before plummeting and Jones said the reason Coyote does that instead of immediately trying to get back to the cliff edge is bc Coyote embodies anxiety and in that particular moment represents the fear and worry about the judgement of others over and above the desire for self-preservation.

Like, if someone was told that interpretation without knowing any better they’d think it came from some pretentious academic or whatever but nope! It’s literally the creator like those are the thoughts he had in his head when he was creating the cartoons

[candyspider-deactivated20230731]

the Nine Rules of the Roadrunner cartoons always sticks with me. Rule 3 especially

[party-gilmore]

[depsidase]

[autumn-outside-the-postoffice]

in honor of the best Dropout clip of all time

[byjove]

whenever I see archeological remains of a human who suffered from a terrible disease that couldn’t be treated in their lifetime but could be fixed now, this wave of sorrow and mourning washes over me. a woman in the 14th century who spent her 35 years of life bent at the waist because of congenital scoliosis. a man from the 18th century who died because of a non cancerous mass on his jaw that made eating progressively more difficult. remains of a woman from the Neolithic who died in childbirth having evidence of peri-mortem trepanation on her skull.

and yet she survived to 35. and yet the physicians in his time tried to strengthen his jaw. and yet someone 4,000 years ago tried to save someone they loved from dying of preeclampsia/increased cranial pressure. we tried. we tried and we tried and we tried. we failed and we learned but we tried. that’s what makes humans so beautiful.

[lyricwritesprose]

My mom sometimes talks about a child in her neighborhood who was born with hydrocephaly and died of it. His parents strove to keep him alive for years, but he ultimately passed after a long decline. No treatment available. No hope at all, and the parents knew it from his birth.

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

He never knew he made the world better. His condition was severe, he never knew much of anything, I don't think. I think if I ever track down a God or something like one, that'll be somewhere on my List of Wishes. To make sure people like him know that they helped.

[mutedtempest]

I think about this a lot.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

Thank you, humanity. Thank you ingenuity and determination to save lives and make them better. Thank you to every medical practitioner and medical researcher in existence now and through all of time. Thank you to all the people who died so I could live.

[hyperactivehedgehog]

Diabetes is one of these illnesses that really throws medical history into perspective. It's so common, everyone knows someone who has it, people live pretty normal lives with it. And yet, a hundred years ago, it was an instant death sentence. And then we were able to treat people with insulin and yet - it was extremely disabling. The insulin was extracted from animal pancreas had severe side effects, even with how similar the hormones are, there is always an averse reaction to proteins from foreign species, especially during long-term treatment. Injections had to be given every few hours, at-home-tests were only available from the 70s onwards. Insulin pumps entered the market in the 80s. Genetically produced insulin - humanized insulin - was first available in the US in 1982, in many countries only around the year 2000.

In 1930, having diabetes type I would basically mean being hospital bound, being woken every few hours for regular injections.

In 1965, you'd be able to live at home and get by with a very strict diet and a few timed injections. You'd struggle with chronical side effects. Having children wasn't done - passing on your genes would be immoral, and it might not even be legal for you to marry.

In the year 2000, you'd have a device clipped to your belt that would measure your blood sugar and distribute insulin, you only need to change the needle a few times a day. You might even be allowed to join in P.E. class

In 2025, you stick on two patches that do the same thing. They're synchronized through your phone.

That wasn't fate. It's not natural development that made diabetes a common chronic illness. It was hundreds of people who cared. It was the people who created the keto diet. It was the people who came up with tests. The ones who went through different species, trying to figure out the closest analogon to human insulin. It was the people who fought in court to get genetically produced insulin approved for medical use. It was people who looked at a rare, incurable disease and said "but what if it wasn't?"

[asteroidtroglodyte]

I love how these are from an Unreality subreddit but to my eye they just read like regular Tumblr shitposts. Did we cross-pollinate or something

[soul-hammered]

[weabooweedwitch]

I love that the pandemic actually definitively proved a lot of those "hard" questions for us. Masking up reduced cases of the flu to almost nonexistent numbers and we had zero flu deaths for a time. The welfare and social service and unemployment programs helped keep people living paycheck to paycheck out of poverty, and those stimulus checks some folks keep complaining about actually massively benefitted the common man and the economy. Individual personal travel was so extremely restricted on a global scale that we basically have concrete proof that individual restraint in terms of driving cars or travelling means absolutely nothing by comparison because the mass pollution is coming from the fisheries and the corporations with private jets and container ships. Working from home actually has massive benefits for a company like productivity boosts and better mental health of employees while also saving gas

and we're just. Willingly going back to how everything was before. We were shown how to do things better and the people in charge said "that's nice but we just want to get everything 'back to normal' :)"

[roach-works]

we’re not willingly going back to how everything was before. we are being forced back into it by members of the ruling class who found out that making things better for almost everyone else made them feel bad.

[girlmostlikely]

[divorce-enjoyer]

well have you considered that maybe the unstoppable force is in love with the immovable object

[divorce-enjoyer]

maybe the reason one refuses to stop and the other refuses to move is because they both long for the collision