Birdpickins

Fat Autistic white trans guy who doesn't know anything but wants to learn

[thecollectibles]

Art by Davood Moghaddami

[assignedmale]

[creekfiend]

I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while and I am sorry if it comes off oddly. How do you navigate an intelligence gap in a relationships? I have dated men of equivalent or greater intellect and found them inadequate in other ways, but when I have dated men less intelligent than me I become frustrated with them and their insecurities bleed into the relationship. You and Ship (or the personas you perform publicly) seem content. How do you avoid getting frustrated? [cont.]

"[part 2] I mean no insult to Ship of course. They seem very attentive and I used to really enjoy their detective skits. From the contents of your blogs they come across as so much less intellectually curious that it surprises me that you are compatible. Do you get adequate intellectual stimulation from other relationships/is that not a need for you in a partner/are my standards unrealistic?"

i have no idea how to respond to this. we have all been in absolutely helpless hysterics about it for the last thirty minutes. this is by far the most deranged ask I have received about my personal life on this website in my fifteen year career on here, and that is saying quite a lot

i can't decide which part of this message is my favorite, but if I HAD to say, probably the part where you appear to be entirely in earnest about this? in almost any other case I would assume a message like this was an elaborate way of insulting me or my partner or both, but I really genuinely don't think that's the case for you, which is actually MORE confusing. its just so compelling. there's so many layers here. i want to hire someone to cross stitch this for me so I can hang it in our living room. i can hear ship intermittently breaking out in peals of hysterical laughter in the kitchen

[creekfiend]

you can see on my heart rate monitor when I opened this ask and began laughing helplessly

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

suggestion for our wedding cake topper:

[blurds]

this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks

[luxshine]

The “Thunk” will always kill me.

[falconratesbirds]

14/10 doing his best

[littleguysdaily]

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[meret118]

You can read about it here without a paywall.

Households exposed to COVID-19 now have an oral drug specifically cleared to prevent infection after contact with a sick person. The FDA listed Xocova, the brand name for ensitrelvir, as a 2026 novel drug approval for post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 following contact with an infected individual. The decision fills a gap that has persisted since the pandemic’s early years: until now, no oral antiviral carried an FDA-approved indication for prevention rather than treatment.

[africanaquarian]

I thought I needed a new laptop but nope, youtube is slowing down your PC if you have adblock on on any open tab...

[astraltrickster]

To be very clear about this: CPUs aren't magical devices that can operate forever. They generate heat. They wear out over time. This happens faster when they're operating near capacity. This is not just an attempt to inconvenience you; this is an attempt to damage your property.

For the "crime" of not wanting to be tracked/have ads pissed into your eyeballs 24/7.

Even if you've paid for the "privilege" of the latter.

Fuck Google, and I hope they get sued into oblivion over this.

[fernwah-funzone]

i see everyone in the notes talking about newpipe but nobody's talking about youtube alternatives for desktop

IF YOU USE A DESKTOP PC OR LAPTOP, TRY INVIDIOUS

https://invidious.io/

it is a free, open-source alternative YouTube front-end. in addition to not having ads, it has other great QoL features like a download button. try one of the several instances on that link up there ^^^^

[saintjosie]

so i was super pissed and concerned about this but i have just discovered that while this is true, it is apparently only true for google chrome users. i just tested this by having ten tabs open in firefox playing ten different youtube videos at the same time and my cpu usage spiked to 25% as the videos were loading and then dropped back down to 10% as they played.

if you ever needed another reason to switch to a different browser, this is it.

[e-the-village-cryptid]

growing up with a psychologist for a mother was so funny because my sister and i would be like “mo-om why do we have to go to bed now” and she would respond with a long explanation of the research on the effects of sleep on the brain and body followed by another explanation on permissive vs. authoritarian vs. authoritative parenting styles, with citations

[e-the-village-cryptid]

this was actually really good in some instances though because i started having insomnia and intrusive thoughts very young and when little me was like “mom i don’t like the thoughts in my head but i can’t make them go away and i can’t sleep” she replied with “oh honey. active thought suppression never works. in fact, wegner et al. (1987) tested this when they told a bunch of people to talk about whatever they wanted, and they told half of them to try not to think about a white bear. people thought more about the white bear when they were trying not to think about it! but when they told the people to think about a red car whenever thoughts of the white bear came to mind, the people had a much easier time not thinking about the white bear. so you see, you can’t force the thoughts out of your mind. you just have to let them pass through, and pick something else that you want to focus on”

and so ever since i was a very little kid i knew how to deal with intrusive thoughts, I’ve had them my whole life but never developed ocd or senses of shame about them cause my mom did her phd on thought suppression and she knows what’s up

[thagomizersshow]

Some woodpeckers make dainty little holes that barely damage the tree.

On the other hand, pileated woodpeckers

[learnmesomeshit-blog]

Your tree has been visited by the Flying Tree Doctor and diagnosed with Infested. He has removed the Unauthorized Fucking Thing. Praise be to Flying Tree Doctor.

[bastardimprisoned]

Neo-Andean Architecture

Designed by Freddy Mamani

El Alto, Bolivia

[things-from-strings]

🕸BEHOLD MY BOY!!!🕸

after who knows how many months of puzzling out the geometry, running out of the right colors, & feeling like i'd NEVER be done making flower motifs, HERE HE IS!! in all his orange glory!!

the cutest, sweetest, most huggable spider in the WORLD!!! ✨️💖🕷💖✨️

his name is Arson 🔥🥰🔥

[socialistexan]

[vitabreva]

[themummersfolly]

How dare you leave this in the tags.

[south-africa-official]

i never really got it when people made posts about light pollution and seeing all the stars for the first time and crying. i always assumed that everyone has gone on a road trip to a bortle 1.0 place and seen stars like that, and it's fantastic, but not like life changing. and then i went to europe last month and was in a mountaintop village of like 300 people and could see about 5 stars in the sky. like fewer than i can see from my home in a big metropolitan city.

my apologies to the non-africans, i did not realise how fucked your sky is

[goldenaltar]

i'm not into this but i feel the need to present it to the people who might be interested: in the spirit of meburgers and forcefemming grace, they make him lactate so he can have mecheese.

[goldenaltar]

#what if hes melactose intolerant:( @kipp-your-secrets

i didn't even think of that that's so sad :(

[seracadash]

(goverment voice) we need to protect the children from pornography so our plan is to remove their eyes so they would never see something so traumatic. if you are against removing children's eyes you are basically a pedophile

[east-south]

maybe they don't like being called names. have you ever thought about that

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#if they don't like being called bin chickens then they should stay out of the bins

I'm sure they would LOVE to do that but unfortunately we turned their habitats into cities and farms so now they gotta look for other places where their long beaks specialised to dip into muck and water looking for tasty crustaceans can be put to use finding them food.

[lethalwizard]

if you’d like to know (one of) her proper names: the wiradjuri word for ibis is ‘bururrgan’ : )

[elbiotipo]

It's very interesting how big of a revolution will LLMs cause (and are already causing) in genetics and bioengineering since DNA and proteins are, for all intent and purposes, really really long words

[elbiotipo]

You can, very literally, fit the entire human genome in a .txt file. It's not the most efficient way to study it but you can

[elbiotipo]

It's so funny that people have such strong opinions on AI but every geneticist I meet is like "oh god finally. This thing does all the work for me. We will find the catgirl gene soon"

[elbiotipo]

And no this isn't just the specialized models like alphafold. You can ask Claude or Deepseek to make pipelines and bioinformatics stuff for you and they work.

[elbiotipo]

A good chunk of AI and LLM research actually comes directly from bioinformatics research. To find the catgirl gene.

[odmnd]

No technology is by default, evil.

The transformer architecture, and LLM’s have very valid and very benefical advantages for humanity. At the same time, however, the raging psychopats who control these companies have indeed completely abandoned their humanity, and removed themselves from the human condition completely.

To let these people decide the fate of the world and its future is utter and sheer madness and self destruction for mankind.

[elbiotipo]

I don't think they're raging pyschopaths or that they are deciding the fate of the world, let alone the destruction of humankind. I just think they want a lot of money and this stupid unequal (read, capitalist oligarch) economy is letting them get away with stupid things. LLMs are a great technology for research and yes, even entertainment. I just don't need them in every single thing I use and I don't need them to replace jobs that need a human touch.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

They were using this tech to generate potential cancer-fighting proteins when I was in uni about a decade ago. I assume they can do it better now with modern models but I've been out of the field for a while. They'd use what we now call "generative AI" to come up with potential proteins, they'd be screened for the most viable (and actually makeable/refinable) candidates, and they'd be tested on cell culture assays to investigate their effect on cell growth.

[peketostuffs]

When I was in my geology undergrad course about 13 years ago, one of my colleague's undergrad thesis involved the use of neural networks for studying drill cores, and I very briefly was the intern of a professor where one project I started involved developing predictive code to automatically interpret gamma profiles (what was sandstone, what was limestone, etc). Another professor of mine did her post-phd about seven or so years ago with using neural networks for generating possible seismic profiles in a simulated block diagram created from a small number of drill cores, and they were generally accurate to the regional geology.

It's only when this stuff could get somewhat passable at making entertainment that it really exploded into the mainstream, but the technology has been in the works and evolving for a very long time.

[pangur-and-grim]

I swear to GOD I’m not vagueing my situation, but I made a post recently about books I was planning to read this year, and I find it very….. interesting that multiple people came into my inbox afterward to tell me that all the queer authors in the bunch had sinned. like maybe they had, I dunno. it wouldn’t stop me reading (I love Interview with the Vampire, I have Thoughts about Anne Rice, etc). but it is interesting that none of the non-queer authors merited this whisper campaign, despite some of them honestly deserving it. not saying anything outright here, just making an observation. listening and learning. you know

[pangur-and-grim]