now with 1,000 kittens

Reblogging cats is what the internet is for. (vitals: b. 1986, irish, straight, cis female. attempting to dismantle white privilege and battle misogyny one kitten at a time)

[bonivers]

going on a guilt trip do yall want anything

[secondbeatsongs]

if you really cared about me you wouldn't have to ask

[d-dormant]

i am so normal about this

[wordpress-blaze-23077625]

Gratitude LX: Senses

To wake up bright and beady-eyed, alert to the theatre of living, this is the gold that glistens the skin. The air, the trees, the walkers at dawn, the river stretched out like a gift, happiness rises in a tide of togetherness. Nothing is separate from the magic that glows. Beauty is king. Let your soul sing.

Source: Gratitude LX: Senses

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

they killed him for this

[doctorwhowatchesthewatchmen]

the circus is empty, all of the monkeys are here

[caesarsaladinn]

"history is written by the victors--so thank god we won, because otherwise some of our actions would have been prosecutable as war crimes"

[caesarsaladinn]

“the woke left will try to tell you that what I did was an ‘atrocity’ and ‘ought to get me hanged’ and to them I say…. ah... [sucks teeth] can we talk about something else?"

[soulren]

“Ghosts are real” I can see how you could believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story

“Ghosts aren’t real yet” the fuck are you going to do

[argumate]

Many people feel that LLMs are a fundamentally unethical technology because they are built on the theft of intellectual property, rely on exploited labor, waste natural resources, spread misinformation, deskill workers, stunt the cognitive development of students, and contribute to a consolidation of power that is unhealthy for a democratic society.

I feel like this critique applies to YouTube and Google, among other things.

[argumate]

it's awkward that many people clearly have a visceral dislike of LLMs as a technology and every company involved in their promotion (although less so the actual people behind their development, that's more complicated), and it compels them to find LLMs deeply immoral in every possible way, even if these critiques would apply more strongly to other technologies that pass without notice.

[understatedocelot]

There is (or at least was) a reciprocal relationship between content authors and youtube/google. You let google index your site and you get traffic. And you could block them through robots.txt. for youtube there were at least semi-serious competitors like vimeo. LLMs have none of the consent or reciprocity

[argumate]

YouTube wouldn't have achieved its current level without pervasive copyright infringement though, and early search engines including Google were often considered to be infringing copyright by "deep linking"! some of that even had to be hashed out in the courts.

[argumate]

Many people feel that LLMs are a fundamentally unethical technology because they are built on the theft of intellectual property, rely on exploited labor, waste natural resources, spread misinformation, deskill workers, stunt the cognitive development of students, and contribute to a consolidation of power that is unhealthy for a democratic society.

I feel like this critique applies to YouTube and Google, among other things.

[argumate]

it's awkward that many people clearly have a visceral dislike of LLMs as a technology and every company involved in their promotion (although less so the actual people behind their development, that's more complicated), and it compels them to find LLMs deeply immoral in every possible way, even if these critiques would apply more strongly to other technologies that pass without notice.

[understatedocelot]

There is (or at least was) a reciprocal relationship between content authors and youtube/google. You let google index your site and you get traffic. And you could block them through robots.txt. for youtube there were at least semi-serious competitors like vimeo. LLMs have none of the consent or reciprocity

[argumate]

YouTube wouldn't have achieved its current level without pervasive copyright infringement though, and early search engines including Google were often considered to be infringing copyright by "deep linking"! some of that even had to be hashed out in the courts.

[feralratbitesu]

breakfast from when before i eated it

[feralratbitesu]

okay. here is my breakfast from before time began

[formeganpage]

LOL [source]

[tiger-in-the-flightdeck]

From the thumbnnail I thought that it was just a jacket thrown over a box that the kitty had made himself comfortable on. I was NOT expecting the tiny little defeated voice to emerge.

[mrcloudyfun]

The slight hand raised in surrender at the end

[swordsman-jing-ke]

“My emperor is fine” your emperor has commissioned over 8000 life-sized terracotta soldiers and buried them facing east, in the direction of his recently conquered enemies in the hopes that they will protect him in the afterlife.

[qin-shi-huang-di]

DELETE THIS IMMEDIATELY

[thefugitivesaint]

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poem 85 from “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated by the author from the original Bengali. New York: The Macmillan Company.

[grammarpedant]

It is an hundred years hence now. Go open your doors.

[zisurru]

i really like history articles where i feel like the author is showing me the subject of their research and going “LOOK at this awesome guy i have, i found him by the side of the road in 1811 and he knows all kinds of cool tricks like ‘write inflammatory letter’ and ‘infidelity’”

[foxehrobot]

You Have More Power Than You Think You Do: A Case Study In Getting Shit Done

I don't live in a walkable city.

I live in a mid-sized Texas town that only realizes that there are people who don't drive when TXDoT gives them money for active transportation infrastructure.

People constantly tell me that you just cannot walk or ride a bike in this city. It's impossible!

I do it anyway, because I firmly believe that solarpunk is a useless aesthetic if you aren't living it as best you can. We don't need technology to solve our problems we need will.

Also I do volunteer work on the political side of the local animal shelter and so I find myself at city hall several times a year and there's no bike rack.

Or rather there wasn't a bike rack.

I complained to someone, politely, informing them that I am doing this volunteer work and I don't have any safe place to lock my bike and that locking it to a handrail is inconvenient for everyone and also hideous.

A few months later a single staple-style bike rack was installed at city hall. It's not much, but I got sent a photo of someone else who got to use it before I did, clearly there was a need, if small.

Then I turned my gaze to the local grocery store, which had a bike rack, but the bike rack was terrible. It was too short for modern tire sizes, it was placed too close to the wall so one side was useless, and it was generally pretty cramped.

It took some time, but an advocate friend told me to contact the property owner instead of banging my head against the wall contacting HEB itself, and so I sent another polite complaint with a photo, explaining why it wasn't a very good bike rack and it would be really cool if we had a different one with better placement.

And about two months later, we have new staple-style racks at the grocery store, properly placed for maximum parking.

It's not a new bike lane. It's not a removal of parking minimums. It's not infill development or an active transportation advisory board.

They're just bike racks.

But that's the beauty of it. I, a person with an email address, some basic "how to be firm but polite while making an argument" skills, and a willingness to work out who to contact, fixed two problems for the local community. Trust me, I have had people wait on me to unlock my bike so they could have the "good spot." I was not the only person annoyed at the old rack.

It can be done. You're not powerless. Solarpunk doesn't have to be a wishful aesthetic.

Technology will not save us.

We have to save us.

[roycohn]

something i've noticed that has become really annoying in the past 10 years or so is this fad of what i've been calling, for lack of a better word, "structural whataboutism." it's that thing where, when faced with a concrete, resolvable problem in your community, your answer is to blame it on a vast, unsolvable issue of structural inequality and then throw up your hands. "there's trash all over the ground in this corner of the park" becomes "well, that's where MEN OF COLOR congregate after their 12-HOUR GRAVEYARD SHIFTS and i'm not going to support a CARCERAL SOLUTION to a CAPITALISTIC PROBLEM. WE NEED TO ELIMINATE POVERTY AND THE SUBJUGATION OF THE WORKING CLASS" and it's like okay but sis. someone still has to go pick up the trash. we don't need a carceral solution, we need more trash cans. you're not going to eliminate poverty and the subjugation of the working class and even if ya did, there would still be trash on the ground. how any of this passes for radicalism within their peer groups i simply don't understand. it's radical laziness more than anything else

[figtreeandvine]

I was on a canoe trip once with a river biologist who worked for the county. After we found and removed a car tire, she started talking about the annual river cleanup her department organized. From a water quality or ecological standpoint, removing shopping carts, car tires, and other macro trash from the river really wasn't that important, she said. The real threat to the river was industrial and agricultural runoff.

"But!" she said:

People who see a clean, trash-free river are more likely support laws to curb more harmful "systemic" forms of pollution. People who participate in river cleanups take pride in their work--their river!--and become evangelists for protecting it.

Immediate action leads to systemic awareness, which leads to systemic change.

[writing-with-olive]

Literally this.

Saying "there's no point in doing something small until the big thing is fixed" is literally just the Glorious Revolution Rapture story all over again, and it's not helpful.

[mildmayfoxe]

only have a couple of these bad boys left!

[mildmayfoxe]

guess who’s back bitch!! 😈