Maya the Bea

MayaBea, she/her/hers. I have definitely grown too old for this website but here I am again. I love reading, book-y things, knitting and crochet, yarn-y things, puns, cats, watching the food network, and studying Linguistics. I have fallen hard into the OFMD and MCYT fandoms and will not apologize for it.

[doubledecks]

“While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.”

— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)

Someone put it into words. I gotta sit down

[queeranarchism]

(Why does this belong on my decidedly not-fan-fiction-related blog, you ask? Because this quote illustrates very well how assuming that anything where people put sex in it is debasing it, objectifying it, or simply ‘sexualizing’ it, etc. often misses a lot of the real picture of why people do that thing.)

[carryapartofmetoo]

It might be a little late for me to be saying this, but for all of you who watched Sinners, thought "Wow, this soundtrack is really great!" and potentially even had your awakening to the blues thanks to the movie - in addition to appreciating the tremendous talent of Miles Caton and living legend Buddy Guy, I am *begging* you to also check out the music of another musician who made an appearance in the film. If you haven't heard of Christone "Kingfish" Ingram before, I cannot recommend his music enough. I genuinely believe he is one of the greatest guitar talents of the last century and I can't wait to see how extensive his music library becomes over time.

[anistarrose]

if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"

[brainrockets]

Do not let your child suffer from spicy bananas!

[gayfrasier]

i love the phrase "which could mean nothing" i think its my favorite thing to come out of the internet ever i love saying it. it could mean nothing but we all know better. we know the truth.

[secunitscompromisedbrain]

excuse me, no I wasn't???

[beguilingcorpse]

congratulations to today’s lucky 10000

[trying-trying2lyk]

i love writing out numbers and then putting them in parentheses like "one (1)" even when i dont need to i think its funny

[justatiredlittlesnail]

[drpepperwhoree]

remember that pride is still a protest

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Remaining time: 6 days 13 hours

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Remaining time: 6 days 13 hours

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Remaining time: 6 days 13 hours

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[jack-the-fool]

Rocky: Grace say Hail Mary archives have all Human media yet Rocky still cannot find classic film Goncharov for movie night statment.

Grace: ....What?

Rocky: Grace not know own earth greatest mafia movie ever made question?

Grace: .......

Grace: What?

[fluoresensitives]

Personally I hate AI because it uses slave labor, is killing the planet and is making people stupid, but that's just me. The soulless art aspect is just one little piece of my grander disdain.

[castrolle]

wait how does AI use slave labor? Do you mean the human works that are stolen and not credited or compensated? Because technically under capitalism everything is exploited but there are varying degrees

[postillfastill]

Aside from the scraping, AI tech companies, including openAI/chatGPT, have outsourced training their models to countries in the global south, specifically Kenya in openAI's case. These workers are working in sweatshop conditions for less than 2 bucks USD per hour. I'm on mobile, but if you search 'openAI Kenya slave labor' and related keywords, you can find multiple articles about it.

[almostdefinitelydying]

Kenyan workers with AI jobs thought they had tickets to the future until the grim reality set in

Training AI takes a heavy toll on Kenyan workers, who say they earned $2 an hour to label and sift through gruesome content for American com

[danieyells]

I think about this so goddamn often. Even the good uses are trained on slave labor.

Wambalo and other digital workers spent eight hours a day in front of a screen studying photos and videos, drawing boxes around objects and labeling them, teaching AI algorithms to recognize them. Human labelers tag cars and pedestrians to teach autonomous vehicles not to hit them. Humans circle abnormalities in CTs, MRIs and X-rays to teach AI to recognize diseases. Even as AI gets smarter, humans in the loop will always be needed because there will always be new devices and inventions that'll need labeling.

 Humans in the loop are found not only in Kenya, but also in India, the Philippines and Venezuela. They're often countries with low wages but large populations — well educated, but unemployed.

The pay for humans in the loop is $1.50-2 an hour.  "And that is gross, before tax," Wambalo said.  Wambalo, Nathan Nkunzimana and Fasica Berhane Gebrekidan were employed by SAMA, an American outsourcing company that hired for Meta and OpenAI. SAMA, based in the California Bay Area, employed over 3,000 workers in Kenya. Documents reviewed by 60 Minutes show OpenAI agreed to pay SAMA $12.50 an hour per worker, much more than the $2 the workers actually got, though SAMA says what it paid is a fair wage for the region.

It's destroying the environment. It's taking advantage of people who're desperate. It's traumatizing them for dollars an hour--if they're lucky and they aren't denied their pay for no reason. I think about this a lot, that these people were made to look at awful and disgusting and illegal things for the sake of training these stupid AI.

"I looked at people being slaughtered," Wambalo said. "People engaging in sexual activity with animals. People abusing children physically, sexually. People committing suicide." Berhane Gebrekidan thought she'd been hired for a translation job, but she said what she ended up doing was reviewing content featuring dismembered bodies and drone attack victims. 

[...]

SAMA says mental health counseling was provided by "fully-licensed professionals." Workers say it was woefully inadequate.

It's just absurd and disgusting and infuriating. Yes the good applications are worth humans working on. It's not a bad thing--if the people employed to do the work are compensated appropriately and cared for. But so many of the uses are just unnecessary.

It just. Sucks. And all they'd have to do to make it suck just a litte bit less would be to pay people appropriately, give them access to the counseling needs they have, treat them like human beings worthy of respect and care on a basic fucking level. It wouldn't resolve the environmental issues or the fact that people are thinking less and less for themselves in the name of getting all of their answers from gen AI but at least they could do one thing to make it a little less The Worst Thing Ever.

[theroguefeminist]

I feel like every day I learn a new reason why AI is terrible

[drarry]

Imagine being the gays at a pride event in 2004 living their lives when someone grabs the microphone and announces to the room that Ronald Reagan was pronounced dead. Can you even imagine the hype, the celebration, the pure elation

[drarry]

This is the Pride Month that It will happen. I feel it in my gay bones

[broken-horn-of-equius]

[ovenroastedtwerkey]

give the Gen Alpha kiddies a little treat, let it be this Sunday so that 6/7 becomes even more hilarious to them/annoying to their parents

[elodieunderglass]

Today the kids wanted to play Takeaway. I don’t mind playing Takeaway, because I can usually do something else with my hands. My role is to place an order on my pretend phone, and receive it from the delivery driver. I’m quite good at Takeaway.

Bear, aged 8, was the leader of this particularly chaotic takeaway. I overheard them pretending to phone another customer - customer order 125 - and explaining that their delivery would be delayed by approximately fifteen minutes due to a “rockslide.”

“Hey, wait a minute, what was that?” I asked.

“Are you order number 125?”

“No, I’m order number 165.”

Bear said severely, “we don’t give information about other people’s orders.”

“That’s very professional,” I said, “but what was that about a rockslide?”

Bear said, “that’s not your order.”

“Sorry,” i said, justly chastened. “Was it a big rockslide? Is it on the news?”

“If you need information about your order, you will get it.”

My pretend phone then pretend rang, so I had to answer it. It was the takeaway.

“Number 165? Your order will be delayed by five minutes.”

“Oh,” I said, “why?”

“Because that’s the time it takes us answering all your stupid questions.”

[singlecent]

[lunagaron]

[pressconferencegazebo]

My most millennial opinion is that the art of Rick Rolling is lost. A Rick Roll isn't any time you put Never Gonna Give You Up in someone face. Anyone can do that in the middle of any video. Lazy. There's no art in it. The target that gets rick rolled has to be an active participant by clicking a hyperlink. The game teaches you an important lesson o internet safety: 'before you click a link, look at the url that it's going to direct you to. Do you want to go there? Is the link malicious?'

A true master Rick Roller made people so eager to see something that they would click the link immediately and skip their usual caution.

[whumpster-fire]

Unfortunately, recent studies show that approximately 35% of Gen Z internet users and 67% of Gen Alpha users don't even know what Rickrolling is. It truly is a dying art. One of the greatest cultural losses of the 2020s.

[xclowniex2]

At a time where jewish groups are being banned from pride events, you do not get to use Anne Franke, a dead jew murdered for being jewish before she could ever come out, as a puppet for whatever queer rights message you want to share.

You do not get to profit, financially or attention wise or another way, off of a *potentially* queer jew whilst we are banned from pride events.

We do not know if she was questioning her sexuality but ultimately straight or if she was actually queer because she was killed for the crime of existing as a jew before she could come out. Queer rights obviously matter. Anne Franke is not the person you should be using.

You need to protect alive queer jews. You need to love all jews, not just the dead ones.

[memeclassheroes]

[greywrenn]

#‘el pastel promedio tiene tres leches’ es en realidad un error estadístico. El pastel promedio tiene 0 leches. Leches Georg#quien vive en una cueva y absorbe 10.000 leches al día#es un valor atípico qeu no debería haberse contado (via @deathbycoldopen)

[bilgisticallykosher]

You've heard of Oy Vey, I'm Gay, now get ready for

VEY ZMIR, I'M QUEER

[bilgisticallykosher]

Reblogging again for pride month 2025.

This is for all those who were promised community, only to be rejected and banned. To all those who can't wear or fly a Magen David ✡️ without being accused of blood libel. To those who had their community turn their backs on them. To those who have had self-proclaimed nazi punchers spew nazi rhetoric back to their face. To those who are lost. To those that lost friends, lost their sense of belonging, because people stole our word and re-defined it to mean something dirty.

To the queer Jews, and allies, who don't have the same place of belonging that they had before October 7th. To those that aren't here anymore, after. Happy Pride.

[bilgisticallykosher]

2026!

Wishing safety and belonging to everyone, especially my Jewish mishpacha and our allies. 💚🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✡️

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges