Hella.

Official sideblog to preserve the OG. Don't mind me lurking. 

[anarchblr]

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

I feel like this tweet matches up well with this one

[ghostintheclawmachine]

As someone who collects a LOT of physical media but doesn’t make a lot of money, I want to share the rule that keeps my wallet from crying out in despair every time I enter a store. I don’t remember who I got this from, but thank you whoever you are because it has been a game-changer when it comes to building a large collection without breaking the bank.

The $1 per hour rule. It’s exactly what it says on the tin. If I’m purchasing physical media, I consider it good value if I can expect to get at least one hour of enjoyment for every dollar I spend on it.

I don’t remember what I spent on BG3, but I know it was a good deal because I’ve logged 600 hours in it. Hades II costs $30, and I was more than happy to pay that because I know I’ll play it for at least 30 hours. When I add books to my library, I almost exclusively buy used books that cost under $5 because 5 hours is a good average estimate for how long it takes me to finish a novel.

Will there be a treat you splurge on every now and then? Of course, but $1 per hour is a good standard to stick to if you want to responsibly build a dragon's hoard of physical media.

[bitchesgetriches]

This is a way better way of expressing it than I've seen before. It's mathy, it's clear, it's easy to remember.

Anyway we took way longer to say something similar in this one: Ask the Bitches: How Can I Absolve Myself of Financial Guilt Over My Pricey PS4? 

[saltoncity]

work tomorrow is one of the worst things that can happen to you

[horrorlesbians]

*head in my hands* why are homes not beautiful anymore

[ralfmaximus]

Zillow

[boltlightning]

Sorry, Jack. I'm not going to be your leverage. [inspiration from @clearpurpleskies] ➢ PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (2003–2007)

[depsidase]

[whatthekoi-deactivated20260510]

“can’t believe women fought to work!! i don’t wanna work!!” women have Been Working they fought to get Paid you know that right ?

[ultrafacts]

The camouflage used on World War I warships, known as dazzle camouflage, often featured zebra-like patterns with bold geometric shapes and contrasting colors. This design was not meant to hide the ship but to confuse enemy observers. The goal was to make it difficult to estimate the ship’s speed, direction, and distance, especially when viewed through rangefinders or periscopes.

It disrupted the perception of the ship’s outline and trajectory, making it harder for enemies to target accurately.

[wishingforthatlife]

This sort of “Dazzle Camo” has apparently started making a resurgence in Ukraine, as it easily fools AI powered drones! Obviously, it doesn’t work against FPV drones.

[afemalesebastian]

"Sewing is a gateway drug to thinking through complex problems. It seems really simple; culturally, we make it women's work. Let me tell you: real sewing at any kind of level of proficiency is a bloody magic trick. Sewing, like mold making, involves mental frames that require one to think inside out and backwards. It requires one to work on an order of operations that is often taking into account the reverse. It's a really, really important skill, and if you learn how to sew, you're mostly on your way to carpentry and welding and sheet metal work. I'm not kidding: these are planar forms meeting under rules and conditions. And if you can make a sleeve work, I swear to God, you could build a house."

--Adam Savage

[venetiawells]

I’m just saying. I started out building clothes and now I build massive, data hungry systems. It is absolutely an engineering gateway drug.

[yayfeminism]

Very informative thread -source

[lastroseofspring]

Dr. Sarah Taber fucking SNAPPED

[sparrowvarrow]

Sebastian... Sebastian my beloved.....

[mylifeisroosterteeth]

you know what you shouldnt do? constantly tell your child how expensive they are to take care of. because eventually, that child gets scared of asking for money, and doesnt feed themself at school, doesnt go places with their friends that require money, because she doesnt want to be expensive. it really does get into their minds, that theyre too much money and that they shouldnt do anything.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

‘Heroic actions are a natural tendency’: why bystander apathy is a myth

Modern research shows the public work together selflessly in an emergency, motivated by a strong impulse to help

“The notion that people panic and run screaming for the exits is a Hollywood fiction,” said Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in group behaviour at the University of St Andrews.

“Characteristically, people stay and help each other,” he said. “We found this during the 7/7 attacks on the underground and the 1999 attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, where people looked after each other even though they feared other bombs.

“In our own research on the Leytonstone tube attack in 2015, there was an amazing level of spontaneous coordination by bystanders: some directed others away from danger. Some distracted the attacker. Some confronted the attacker. Each was able to act because of the others. Heroism was a feature of the group, not just the individual,” he added.

Prof Clifford Stott, a specialist in the psychology of crowds and group identity at Keele University, agreed. Modern research, he said, showed “bystander apathy” was a myth. Instead, strangers often work together in emergency situations with highly sophisticated unity.”

[cephalopodvictorious]

Bystander apathy is a myth invented by the New York Times to cover up that the police were called by several residents of the building, but the cops refused to act. The cops then told the Times that 38 people just watched her die (a seemingly arbitrary number and a physical impossibility based on where the attacks occurred), and the Times ran with it. In fact, Kitty was alive when the cops got there, and was being held and comforted by one of her friends who lived in the building because one of the people who saw her get attacked from across the street called her friend to go get her. Because people care.

The Bystander Effect Started from a Lie

You have just been attacked. How likely is it that someone will come to your help? If you remember the infamous case of Kitty Genovese in 19

[moosepower]

I will always re-blog this. The story of Kitty Genovese’s murder has gone down in history as a story about everyone watching it happen and doing nothing and none of the story is true.

[foxehrobot]

May I also offer:

A Paradise Built in Hell - Wikipedia

This book is about how during several past disasters, people came together to help one another, and it was the elites who panicked and assumed that people were going to riot and loot.

When shit goes down, people help.

[ltwilliammowett]

The Danish training ship “Georg Stage” (1934) dresses in rainbow colour, 2021 

[keatxu]

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

[omikronsoul]

Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.

[justletmeremember]

op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.

[macleod]

When I worked for the government a few years ago, one of the offices I was in charge of managing for their network, security, and IT systems was the nuclear task response office, this is the office that is in charge of toxic cleanups, nuclear fallout (if such a thing ever happened), and more.

They required having tech from the past sixty years ready at a moments notice (if X fails, try Y, then Z, etc). A lot of the older digital methods are all abandonware, sitting on computers developed in 1991 because they couldn't figure out how to safely transfer or migrate them to newer hardware (or even knew they had! found a server from '95 at the back of a closet somehow still running! connected to a powerstrip from '89! I kept the powerstrip, it's so chunky.)

One of my favorite jobs was figuring out how to get this software that had virtually no documentation remaining (likely buried in the office, but I never found it), or instructions, or really anything to a modern, more resilient, system. The company went out of business in '93, and the only known developer I could track down was in a retirement home.

I did eventually shift it over to run in a container/emulator for DOS, but it was a nightmare (one I loved) that took me months of hacking things together to figure out how it all went together.

Abandonware, the source code, the documentation, the IP, all of it, should be legally required to be disclosed, released, and submitted to public and government archives after either 12 years after first release, and/or upon dissolution. Until that happens, this entire era is likely going to be referred to as the digital dark age. Where everything was once online and available, but where nearly all of it will be knowingly lost.

[ralfmaximus]

The Dead Economy Theory

We can laugh at them but we have to take this seriously

So let’s take them at their word. Assume the technology works as advertised, that AI systems become capable of performing most cognitive labor at a fraction of the cost of human workers. What happens next?

LLM is certainly not AI as we think of it, but what if the world doesn't care and embraces it anyway? Quick answer: the economy will implode in ways we haven't considered yet.

Longer answer: read this thoughtful essay on how screwed we might already be.

[animentality]

[arrowandaxe]

[bee-in-your-binnet]

Coyotes trying their damndest to get domesticated