@loveroflightandwater - Tumblr Blog

Every time I try to tell any of my friends about the Vorkosigan Saga I just end up sobbing hysterically about how instead of the protagonist having a STRICT AND DISAPPROVING military father he instead has a CANONICALLY BISEXUAL and UNCONDITIONALLY SUPPORTIVE military father who LOVES his trainwreck son EVERY DAY, recognizes that Miles is doing his best, and took TWO HOURS OFF from work at lunch throughout Miles’ whole childhood despite being an IMPORTANT MILITARY STRATEGIST as well as REGENT TO THE EMPIRE to go home and play with his disabled infant son and try to encourage him to walk despite the chronic pain and leg braces…………….

like…………..thank u Lois “fuck toxic masculinity stereotypes” McMaster Bujold for my ENTIRE life

pagecommando

“I only wanted to serve Barrayar, as my father before me. When I couldn’t serve Barrayar, I wanted – I wanted to serve something. To-” he raised his eyes to his father’s, driven to a painful honesty, “to make my life an offering fit to lay at his feet.” He shrugged. “Screwed up again.”

“Clay, boy.” Count Vorkosigan’s voice was hoarse but clear. “Only clay. Not fit to receive so golden a sacrifice.”

— Miles and Aral Vorkosigan, The Warrior’s Apprentice

lurkinglurkerwholurks

Pushing this out directly after my last book recs post to yell

THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO BELIEVE MY BOOK RECS

#vorkosigan saga #book rec #can confirm amazing books

klapollo

I heavily recommend getting very good at spotting Meta glasses. Like I'm talking so good all you need is a glance. Otherwise, I would go about public life bearing in mind that more and more people are wearing expensive camera glasses that can record you without you realizing.

klapollo

Learn how to identify smart glasses through visual cues, behavioral patterns, and recording indicators. Handle privacy concerns with this pr

Ready or not, the smart glasses future is upon us.

With smart glasses, there are concerns around being recorded. Fortunately, you can watch for indicator lights and certain movements as a way

Here are some basic primers. If someone is wearing what look like Meta glasses, they usually have a small circular camera in the outer corners of the lenses, like the one on your phone.

I would also regularly check their own product pages so you're on top of what the models look like. They tend to have larger frames, but come in a variety of shapes and colors.

Shop every style. Every color. Prices from $299 to $499. Browse Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta AI glasses and sunglasses to find your pair.

klapollo

The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film p

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glasses’ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.

The app comes as companies such as Meta continue to add AI-powered features to their glasses. Earlier this month The New York Times reported Meta was working on adding facial recognition to its smart glasses. “Name Tag,” as the feature is called, would let smart glasses wearers identify people and get information about them from Meta's AI assistant, the report said.

ozarkthedog

I am against Meta and everything they stand for but I’m curious if peoples’ opinions would change about someone wearing them as a disability aid?

viridian-dagger

Not necessarily, because Meta has military contracts (source 1, source 2, source 3), is testing surveillance tech on their own employees and their customers (source 4, source 5), and there are at least two class action lawsuits against them for privacy violations (source 6, source 7, source 8). There is also some sketchy stuff about workers being forced to review material, which may or may not be used without the customer's permission, that is sensitive, graphic, and/or pornographic (source 9).

The American Foundation for the Blind has said that "The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are an accessibility tool only by coincidence. That makes them more affordable and, in many ways, unaware of the needs of users with reduced vision" although they do have seemingly positive views on Meta Glasses as a whole. (source 10). It also seems like their marketing push as accessibility devices began last year (source 11).

But to add even more into the nonsense, Meta is now toying around with adding a "limit" to the functionality of their glasses unless their users pay for more access (source 12). AND, as stated above, Meta has officially added facial recognition code in their glasses and only admitted it after being called out, which is basically the death of privacy as we know it (source 13, source 14, source 15). And oh look another lawsuit because of it (source 16) THAT THEY LOST (source 17)!

Long story short: I don't begrudge someone using them as a disability aid overall, but ultimately both their privacy and other people's privacy are being disregarded by Meta and that is not and should not be acceptable by any means.

I understand there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but there is a level of personal responsibility someone has to take when using them if they truly truly need them, such as opting out of sharing information, not filming strangers without permission, not posting footage of strangers online, opting out of facial recognition if possible, etc.

Disabled people deserve assistive technology AND privacy rights, and Meta is not the solution.

#smart glasses #surveillance #with sources!

fuckyeahchinesefashion

OP: This is the first time I've seen the Yellow River's sediment discharge with my own eyes.

jingyuanyuan

There's a Chinese meme that the Yellow River doesn't need rituals to present sacrifices because if it's hungry it'll come onto the shore and eat the sacrifices itself.

asmuchasidliketo

#some netizens also say chinese people like unification because only a powerful unified dynasty can survive the yellow river and sometimes #also the chang jiang when they decide to flood and change directions and kill and displace millions #also only large dynasties have the resources to do hydroengineering to try and control the yellow river #yellow river be like: if you don't hydroengineer you die #but if you do you might also die heehee #“we call these our mother rivers not because they are gentle but because we are too scared” tags on above post

(source: Wikipedia)

setnet

@mikkeneko

alterac

what in the

oh my god??

cryoverkiltmilk

People talk about how the Great Lakes are deadly because they are uncaring, but the Yellow River is literally out to get everyone.

brinconvenient

The Great Lakes are uncaring, don't care whether you live or die, ambivalent, pay no attention to you.

The Yellow River cares. Deeply. About you, specifically. And your death. And being the cause of it. It notices you and your intentions. You've been warned. Exercise your hubris accordingly.

#the yellow river

gaslit-dipshits

appalachian-werewolf

Follow the money behind America's data center boom. Track 2,300+ projects, PAC spending, and the politicians who sign off on it.

#data centers #politics #us politics

titleknown

The Trump administration is cynically exploiting calls for stricter AI regulation to pass broad censorship measures at the federal level.

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

So, if you live in the US and hate censorship and AI you know what to do, contact your congresspeople and tell them do not fucking dare let this through or so help us god...

titleknown

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The bastards just worked out a deal on the package, and they're going to try and ram it through the House in the next couple of weeks.

So, if you've been waiting to call, the time is NOW. Do it ASAP, be polite, be informed, but light up those phones like a Christmas tree!

nasa

Celebrate Your Special Day With Hubble

This is the Veil Nebula, which Hubble saw on July 1, 2020.

Have you ever looked up what our Hubble Space Telescope saw on your birthday? (Or your anniversary, or your pet's adoption day, or...)

We've given our popular interactive page a new look — and, just as importantly, it now shows you five different cosmic sights Hubble was checking out on the day that you picked.

Take a look!

#NASA #Hubble Space Telescope

dogposts

xiketic

Something I haven't seen many people talk about in PHM is the fact that Eridians probably don't have the same attitudes towards time as humans do. Think about it: Erid is an inherently dayless place, having an atmosphere that allows no light and thus no concept of day or night. We don't really think much about how our entire lives are structured around this cycle that Earth life has been experiencing for eons. Erid life has no concept of this at all. Eridian sleep schedules are somewhat irregular and not synced to each other (they can't be, not if someone always stays awake to watch). They don't track birthdays like we do, they can't unless they're paying attention to their solar cycle, which I'd expect is a relatively new thing for their culture. Maybe they base age on their near-perfect memories or how many layers their carapace has or how big they are, or experiences/accomplishments. They may have an idea of an Eridian year, if their planet has seasons or something like that, but I doubt it has a whole lot of importance to them.

I'd image having an alien who relies so heavily on cycles and repeated patterns in order to function normally would be mind-boggling to the Eridians. What do you mean it celebrates the exact day of its birth every so often, just because? Wait we need to program a reliable change in light levels to simulate its planet, which has almost no atmosphere? And we have to schedule any interactions we have with it around this cycle? Wait it tracks its age by the scientific year, not by life experience and physical aging?

Constantly being reminded that this guy Rocky brought home that saved their entire planet is, in fact, a complete alien.

#phm

crookedtines

Finally bought some dye and have been having so much fun with optical color mixing. I decided to start with cmyk primaries to get some vibrant color options.

So far I've only mixed up the main batch of colors, but I'll split them up and create a palatte of tints and shades once I have access to a scale again.

I don't have any fancy tools and have been blending the fiber by hand, so it's probably best I have a forced break for the sake of my fingers. Once I'm done I should have a very useful set of 57 2g swatches to play with! (Plus 5 more for a set of grayscale swatches)

If I'm still up for it, I might repeat the whole thing with my classic red, yellow, blue primary dye set. For a truly massive set of heather swatches.

crookedtines

I'll create a comprehensive guide to all the color mixes and my process once I'm done, but in the meantime here's a mixing guide for the colors I've already done!

The ratios are presented in the same order as the wool swatches in the photo above it. I didn't simplify any of the ratios so you'll have to deal with 2:2s instead of 1:1s, oops.

For anyone curious, I used brilliant yellow, deep magenta, and caribbean blue from Dharma dyes on their corriedale wool for my base colors.

kiragecko

[First image shows 5 balls of wool in white, black, magenta, yellow, and blue.

The second shows tufts of the various colours lined up together ready to be mixed. Blue by itself, blue and magenta, magenta and yellow, blue magenta and yellow, etc.

Third and fourth image show some of the resulting swatches - most of which are vibrantly coloured.

Final image visually shows the ratios of colours for all of the swatches in the fourth image, using lines of yellow, magenta, and cyan. The ratios are written below.

End ID.]

uhanekahiko

Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

baddestvenus-in-virgo

sometimes I am just amazed at how my ancestors managed to navigate the entire Pacific Ocean with these. knowledge that was nearly lost and is being re-learned.

gamebird

AH! I'd heard of these, but this is the first time I've come across pictures.

clarisselxy

vince gilligan i know what you are

#x files

lurkinglurkerwholurks

Live from New York City: a record-setting heat wave is coming, two masked people climbed the Empire State Building spire, the woman is wearing a Catwoman mask, the man proposed, and this was all captured by news helicopters

loveroflightandwater

Let's not forget what the flag says because the media isn't showing it.

"When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace"

iusedtobecharming-deactivated20

Do we have a franz kafka diary entry for july 1st, i want to know what he thinks!!!

rehearsing

happy too tired July everyone

disney-universes

From Vulture’s Oral History of Lilo and Stitch, here’s stories of what Michael Eisner was like in sweatbox screenings of 90s DIsney classics.

Completely fucking clueless. The incarnation of Defunctland’s jokes about him. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois just hid Lilo and Stitch from him until it was done, absolute legends.

#disney #michael eisner #mulan #the lion king #lilo and stitch

neonprotagonist

Girls Scouts encounter Bigfoot the most frequently. Part of their oath is to keep him a secret because he’s very kind and makes up 30% of their revenue due to his fervent love for thin mints.

hlahlahlahlahly

As a Girl Scout leader, I am telling you that this is NOT true, and any former girl scout that says it is, should think about what they are saying and what oaths they may have sworn in the past

mx-dorkboy

Anyway adults saying “I don’t know isn’t an answer” is part of the reason I learned to lie and bluff so well.

mx-dorkboy

Really though, what was that about? I don’t know is a valid answer. It communicates very clearly that the child cannot answer your question, and therefore maybe needs more help understanding the question/situation. Why do you try and push them to give an answer they don’t have? That stresses them out and it makes them feel like they’re being punished for not knowing something.

logically-asexual

i thought i was the only one with an “i don’t know” problem because my parents made it seem it was the strangest and also most horrible thing in the world. i genuinely didn’t know and they got angry and that only blocked my thoughts more which meant i didn’t know the answer to anything else.

kitvalkyrie

THIS ^^^

nyxwoven

Also “I don’t know” is a commonly used sentence for children with ADHD/Autism. We DON’T know why we can’t do our homework. We DON’T know why we can’t eat certain foods sometimes. We DON’T know why we forgot to do a chore. It’s really distressing when you genuinely don’t know and people think you’re just lying or indifferent

vampykitty-kun2

Ah yes, the parental double standard.

Child : “I don’t know” 😭

Parent : “That’s not an answer!” 😡

And yet…

Parent : “Because I said so!” 😡

Child : “But why?” 🥺🤨

Parent : “I’m the adult, don’t argue with me!”

Child : “I’m not arguing, I just want to know the why???”

Parent : “Stop talking back and go to your room!” 🤬

rosalesbeausderholle

One thing that worries me about the use of AI is whether or not it can worsen people's dementia and alzheimer's in the future. When my grandmother was first diagnosed, we got her math activity books. Now, my grandmother never had a formal education, but we did our best to keep her sharp, get her to do math and writing activity books, sudokus, playing board games that required some level of strategizing with her. Her family is prone to alzheimer's and dementia (both her siblings had it and deteriorated very very very quickly, which yeah, scares the shit out of me being her granddaughter) but she was the one whose mind lasted the longest, she only passed away two years ago, at 88, ten whole years after her initial diagnosis and sure, she had forgotten things, recipes and where she put her glasses and appointments, but she never forgot any of us, ten whole years in, she still remembered us. Now, this may have been luck, but doctors always said the constant mental work + companionship + medicine helped her a lot. So I'm thinking, these people who are now relying on AI for everything, from email-writing to thinking what's for dinner to casual conversations, I've even seen people rely on it to calculate what time they should leave their house if they need to be at a place at a specific time and their commute lasts X number of minutes. As if that's not... the simplest math operation possible? You shouldn't even need a calculator for that!!! Idk I don't know how long it'll take us to see the effects of this + exposure to brain-rotting short form content that is completely meaningless + people addicted to right-wing conspiracy style media. Idk I'm very worried. Please, read, read complicated books! Take up a book on philosophy and try to decipher it and make your own opinions on it, please buy a maths activity book and relearn how to do math, please get a hobby that involves lots of thinking and concentrating. PLEASE!!!

notalotgoingonatthisinstant

As a neurologist, I’ll give you the pretty name for it: cognitive reserve.

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

TLDR: Yes. From the knowledge we have today, AI will increase the number and severity of dementia cases.

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