[anasabdin]

間

[morphmaker]

are there palm tree Ents

[morphmaker]

Palm Tree Ents: The Appendices

[ceescedasticity]

I would argue that palms being, like, botanically not trees is no reason they couldn't be trees in spirit enough for there to be a palm tree Ent. This is Tolkien, we're relying on vibes not scientific rigor.

[explodingsilver]

I've seen some posts trying to make fun of former gifted kids by comparing them to former student athletes who insist that they could have gone pro if not for a specific injury, and those posts always backfire, because my reaction to them is "You're right, we should treat former student athletes with more compassion than we currently do"

[self-loving-vampire]

I went from being very physically active to getting the "your body doesn't make energy properly anymore" disability so I can completely understand the grief that comes with circumstances outside your control destroying parts of you you were once proud of and locking you out of the life you could have had. It's not a good feeling.

[cadaverkeys]

You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).

Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.

[feyosha]

[everymournfulbreath]

Israel Exposed — War Crimes Archive

Documented evidence of war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

[stoptheantisemitism]

One day Palestine will be free and evidence from archives like this will be important in helping bring these Zionazis to justice.

[bebewrites]

genAI companies are now buying up rare and antique books so they can scan them and use them to train their AI. then they're destroying the books afterward.

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almos

AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.

they've had to face settlements against stealing from current authors, so they'll just go for the old books now. they're also doing this so they have the only copies of rare books.

they're taking water, power, natural resources for their data centers. they steal. they're book burning, essentially. i'm just so angry, i'm at a loss right now.

[urie]

americans are sooo desensitized to guns and sometimes it manifests in ways that affect your media literacy. like remember in the first episode of sherlock when john watson opens up his drawer and you see a gun in there and youre supposed to understand that this is narratively significant and conveys his suicidality as well as his willingness to skirt rules and laws but the first time i watched it i was like oh well theres his desk gun. lots of people have those

[guerrillatech]

[aflo]

posting this on twitter will get you put into witness protection

[truestoriesaboutme]

The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.

[terminallyonlinecat-deactivated]

The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.

[im-mender]

It's important to note that Chekhov's Gun was not originally about foreshadowing, but a piece of advice to playwrights about how every element in a play should have narrative relevance. The corollary to Chekhov's Gun is that if a gun mounted on the wall in act 1 is never used at all in the entirety of the play, then it should be omitted from the play entirely.

[im-mender]

also very true

[venerable-thief]

I am a huge fan of retiring to my quarters

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

In this economy you'll be lucky to retire to your nickels

[quinnception]

[thefairytaler]

My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.

If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.

[narendur]

I remember it like this (either AAAA or ARRA):

Acknowledge the effect of your actions

Accept responsibility for what you did (what you did and that you did it - you don't need to tell the other person why but you should try to figure it out for yourself.)

Amend/Repair the harm caused if you can

Adjust your behaviour so it doesn't happen again

It's often less important to make sure you do every step with smaller apologies, but the larger your mistake and more often you have made that same mistake, the more important it becomes to make sure you actually go through all the steps. Also, don't focus too much on gaining forgiveness; apologizing properly is a part of caring how you effect other people around you. Imo you'll do a much better job if you focus on being safe, friendly, kind, etc. than if you focus on absolution.

[resemblingthegrave]

oh i also wanted to mention that i've been volunteering with the prison library support network and really enjoying it! i thought i would post about it in case anyone else is interested bc i know there are a lot of library/library-adjacent people and abolitionists #onhere.

plsn is an abolitionist volunteer org whose primary service is reference, so answering questions and providing resource access to people inside, and you can volunteer to either be a part of processing their incoming/outgoing mail or otherwise to actually help answer the reference questions, which is what i've been doing. you don't have to be a librarian to volunteer; they will teach you how to do reference and there are templates and faqs to help you every step of the way. plsn is based in new york but they answer mail from facilities all over the country, and you can participate remotely + asynchronously even if you live elsewhere or outside the u.s. it's also a low time commitment - they ask you to answer at least 4 letters per year, though of course you can do as many as you want - the only time-sensitive part is that once you claim a letter, they ask you to answer it within 5 days.

it's an opt-in system where you to choose the letters you'd like to answer and you're never required to answer a letter that you don't want to; i would say based on my experience so far that there is a particular need for volunteers who are interested in helping letter writers access erotica; people frequently write in requesting written erotica, photos of celebrities, pornstars, and cartoon characters, etc. and volunteers' job is to provide that while keeping within whatever specific facility guidelines apply so that the resources can actually make it back into prison without being rejected by censors. there are also so many letters about different games and gaming systems, especially magic the gathering; i had no idea how many people inside are playing magic the gathering! plus tons of requests for different books and articles either in part or in whole, so it is also a lot of straight resource acquisition.

there's information about how to get involved here, how to get trained for reference here, and/or you can check out their instagram -- i'm also happy to chat about my experience if it would be helpful to anyone!

[aspirationalbrand]

amazing things happening in late series columbo episodes

[seat-safety-switch]

When you get really fucked up on that hobby lifestyle, you'll soon find yourself in a strange new place. Industrial auctions can give you all the oddball professional-grade tools that you've always dreamed of, often at a fraction of the price. Are you an accomplished hobby welder? Probably you have always wanted a UV-reactive radio cranfondulator with which to inspect your wire for sharkbite oxides, but it just isn't justified because all you do is fix the exhaust on your shitty Celica once a year. At an industrial auction, maybe you can get one for five dollars. And that's when the fun begins.

As we all know, good tools are big tools. Even big-brain stuff like electron microscopes are large enough that they need a forklift and a buddy with an intact lower back to move. Getting all that shit out of the filthy warehouse or partially-collapsed office building is a task on its own. Sometimes you need to buy new tools just to move it: good thing you're at an auction that sells stuff like cranes, forklifts, and low-mileage/high-hour pickup trucks with an inexplicable thick layer of coal dust on every surface. Make sure to check the return policy.

So you got it home, and now everything's easy, right? Not so. You see, when a big business buys a new piece of industrial equipment, it usually comes with some assistance. Technicians, or at least a single-page badly-photocopied manual telling you where to plug it in. As such, your first project quickly becomes: how in the seven divine hells of AliExpress do I get this thing to work?

Resurrecting this ancient beast of commerce is not quite as simple as a consumer product. Consumer products are, by definition, popular. Really good tools? They may have made like ten of them. There, one quick web search can rapidly locate thousands of arguing morons who have strong opinions on how to set it up. No: if the company that made it even still exists, the best you can hope for is an email from the current engineers asking you to take a bunch of pictures of it because they've forgotten how to make one run. Then you have to bribe an electrician to do something that is "not advised for houses" to your house, just so you can power it.

Now you can have infinite hobby joy. This massive, overcomplicated, insanely expensive machine is at your fingertips, and you can finally check off that annoying task you've been putting off for the last couple of years. You know, this whole thing was so easy, why don't we go back to the auction next weekend and see if we can get a meta-masticating crombopulator to install right next to it?

[cyberpunkpavlichenko]

After "Political Terrorism" Summit, U.S. Names 43 Americans + Groups

Rubio report on Cuban subversion names Zohran Mamdani, Amy Goodman, Hasan Piker + orgs like DSA and Amazon Labor Union

“Many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history — from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses — can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence,” the report says.

As for who these supposed agents of Cuban influence are, the report is remarkably explicit. It names people like Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame), Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass, media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.

The implication is clear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks there should be a modern-day blacklist of the political left in America. In fact, the report explicitly mentions the “blacklists, McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions” of the 1950s and their effectiveness at dismembering the Communist Party USA.

The 100-page report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” was released this morning.

[benefitscrounger]

oh so we really are just repackaging the 'judeo-bolshevism' conspiracy but for Latinos and Muslims, awesome

[benefitscrounger]

in all seriousness though this is a terrifying escalation in rhetoric, and frankly, i would call it genocidal language being aimed at Cubans in particular, but Latin America more broadly.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

are people talking about the labor conditions at Taylor Farms yet? like the fact they use enslaved prisoners in their facilities?

are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

are people demanding to see the conditions in this place that keeps making us sick? why are the enslaved workers not having the time to use the bathroom or to rest when ill? very few people would shit in front of their coworkers given any choice at all.

[cutecipher]

On the prisoners point:

Prisoners in the U.S. are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from F

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20251124

[becauseits]

here is every mention of the companies/products mentioned in the mpr article

Name the chains! At this point in the article it seems like contracting with prisons is the default for meat plants ☹

was it Hillary Clinton who lived in a mansion staffed by prison slaves? somebody please tell me which politician was called out

slavery is so deeply baked the meat and dairy industry & our food chain in general. the scale of it all is baffling. animal agriculture gets billions & billions of taxpayer subsidies while the labor is fucking free. never eat meat in this fuckin country i guess. honestly just never eat

[dogpuppy]

[mandywondering]

I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.

[dietspam16]

if you go from biology to physics without dying first you don’t go to heaven the uber driver went over this already