The Blog With Five Names @oqmemphis - Tumblr Blog

jet lag S18 finale spoilers

god fucking dammit why does being team Sam have to be a constant exercise in intellectual masochism. what is happening to this man and his luck curse. how is he on a seven-game losing streak. why can Ben and Adam miss their exit twice and still board their flights, and get a sequence of card pulls in the exact right order to claim the entire fucking northeast corridor.

#jet lag the game #oqm

tpwrtrmnky

Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

That is the problem.

syn4k

"lock in" is probably one of the most important phrases to enter the public lexicon in the 2020s

joyflameball

oqmemphis

This is a security announcement. If you see something that doesn't look right, speak to staff or text the British Transport Police on 61016. Please mind the gap between the platform and the hopeless, wasteful void through which the Shimmering City of Basingstoke may yet be accessed. Great Western Railway operates a Penalty Fare Scheme from this station. Please make sure to buy a ticket before you never board. Do you see something that doesn't look right? We are sorry to announce that the 28:28 service to Rzeszow has been cancelled. This is due to a silent, ominous figure in a cheap leprechaun outfit blocking the tracks. May I have your attention, please? The next stop is: the colossal hive of hallucinogenic hornets inhabiting the abandoned caverns beneath us. Do you see something that doesn't look right? Text us on 66666. This train has been diverted via Wainwright, Alaska, where it will deterioriate into a pile of freezing rust and wreckage, and you will rot for the rest of your days, may they not last overly long. The next stop is: Purgatory. Do you see something that doesn't look right? It will be your burden now and forever, into the eternity of your Sisyphean existence. You are on your own. Good luck. Thank you for travelling with Great Western Railway.

oqmemphis

hey you'll never fucking guess what's just happened to me

Okay I think most of my followers are from outside the UK so I need to explain to you what the fuck has happened in British politics in the last 24 hours

Recently, Nigel Farage (the Member of Parliament for Clacton, and the frog-faced leader of right-wing fascist party Reform UK) has come under scrutiny for receiving a £5 million "gift" from a crypto billionare, and being unable to give a consistent answer for why. He has denied any wrongdoing, he has threatened reporters for asking questions about the matter, and he is currently under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commission.

If the Standards Commission finds Farage in breach of conduct, he will likely face a recall election in his district in September. He is unhappy with this possibility, so he has decided to "resign" and trigger a special election now. I say "resign" in quotes because he is standing in said election, and intends to remain in Parliament. Theoretically, winning this election will demonstrate that he has a mandate from the people in his district to continue representing them in spite of the allegations against him.

This is idiotic for several reasons. First, resigning now does not permanently shut down the Standards Commission investigation; if he is re-elected, the Commission can still find against him later on and still force him to face a recall election, meaning the Clacton constituency might have to hold two elections in the space of a few months.

The other problem for Farage is that essentially nobody else is bothering to entertain this farce. No major party is running a candidate against him, arguing that Farage is throwing a tantrum and wasting public money in the process. Only one opponent of note has put their name forward: intergalactic space warrior and perennial satirical candidate Count Binface.

The above image gallery is, at time of writing, the entire slate of candidates for this election.

This gambit has backfired spectacularly on Farage. He thrives on media attention, but with no serious candidates standing, this campaign won't receive any. No journalist who does cover it will bother asking him policy questions, so they will have to ask him about the £5m "gift" instead, which he hates discussing. He cannot run his usual shtick of presenting himself as the "anti-establishment voice", because the only thing more absurd than running against a comedian with a dustbin on his head is referring to said dustbin comedian as an "establishment politician". He cannot even attack Binface for not being local to the district because, to quote Binface himself, Farage "spends more time in America than in Clacton". The whole process will humiliate Farage --doubly so if Binface (as the sole protest candidate) garners a significant portion of the vote -- and one of the few things that fascist politicians cannot stand is humiliation.

Unfortunately I think Binface's chances of actually winning are slim (Clacton is a heavily right-wing area, and many people who oppose Farage will probably ignore the election outright rather than cast a protest vote). If he does win, though, I can say with certainty that the crabs will be raving and the Destiel screenshots will be out in full force.

#oqm #uk politics #nigel farage #count binface

parkayquarts

"what if someone regrets transitioning" if you are 18 or over in free country usa you can walk into any tattoo parlor and ask for a tattoo that will be on your body forever and ever and ever and they will give it to you with the understanding that if you dont like the result or you regret it later that's your fucking problem and not theirs

i was recently shown this image and i will provide no further context at this time

#oqm

oqmemphis

come solve my evil riddle

The SCP Foundation's 'top-secret' archives, declassified for your enjoyment.

(collab with @dino--draws, because if we have to read Yeats then so does everyone else!)

dino--draws

WE COOKED AND ALSO WE'RE MAKING YEATS A VISION EVERYONES PROBLEM

Have On Guard 43 order cult shenanigans with a horrible death ritual because the death cult is death culting. And there's a big big cat monster. which is also god.

gallusrostromegalus

Well. It's the Fourth Of July. Again.

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

prokopetz

Thoughts on the schism?

"The Society of Saint Pius X pulled some excommunication-worthy fuckshit" is basically any given Wednesday. The only mildly surprising thing is that it took the Vatican this long to pull the trigger!

rlyehtaxidermist

I do think that the funniest way to respond to schismatics whose core complaint is that your institution is changing too quickly is to take nearly 40 years to openly declare them schismatics.

dandelionmoss

here's thing i wrote up in 2022 and completely forgot about for the past few years:

Abstruse English

Introduction

I appreciate the worth of restricted varieties of English that solely contain frequently utilized words, exemplified by the Simple English Wikipedia and Randall Munroe’s volume Thing Explainer. Pondering these varieties, an additional query materialized to me: what if in lieu of increasing the straightforwardness of the vocabulary, I increased its complexity and unpleasantness?

Consequently arose Abstruse English.

Regulations of Abstruse English

Abstruse English excludes from its vocabulary the 1,000 English lexical items utilized with maximal frequency. Abstruse English permits essential exceptions:

Articles (“the”, “a”)

Pronouns (“I”, “it”)

Prepositions (“of”, “as”)

Conjunctions (“and”)

”No” and “not”

Abstruse English additionally permits numerals ("1,000") and capitalized nomina propria (“Abstruse English”, “Randall Munroe”).

Auxiliary Challenges

The vocabulary of Abstruse English entirely lacks varieties of the lexical item “to be”. Consequently, the constraints resemble E-Prime, a restricted dialect of English lacking conjugations and contractions of that lexical item.

Abstruse English additionally lacks varieties of “to do”, necessitating atypical negations.

Utilize not Abstruse English; it lacks utility and elegance.

oqmemphis

The SCP Foundation's 'top-secret' archives, declassified for your enjoyment.

thedaddycomplex

Operations chief Andrew Macdonald said he's not seeing proportional productivity gains from increasing AI costs within Uber.

This reminds me of a story...

In the social media boom of the 2010s, I was a social media professional (a new career thanks to this very tumblr account and a short-lived career because I like my mental health).

Back then, it was obvious what platforms companies needed to be on: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. Becase that’s where their customers and potential customers were.

Then, there came a rumbling through the profession. Our colleagues were told we had to be on Google+, it was going tro be the new king social platform.

A lot of social media pros got their companies or clients to jump in with both feet. Some of us, however, took a beat and asked a simple question: “Who told you Google+ was necessary?"

We asked this because it felt like the reverse process of what had come before. Previous platforms grew into something first. No one could have predicted what a cultural juggernaut Tumblr became, the result of a sense of community among the users that formed organically and was fostered by the staff. Twitter started as a place where people dropped clever one-line jokes and became the largest and most critical breaking news outlet in thr world (RIP Twitter).

But, in the case of Google+, no one seemed to be rushing to the platform. The user base was nearly non-existant. Yet, the buzz that it would be the next big thing was loud and, for that reason, many comapnies started official accounts and shifted a part of their social strategy to the platform. But still, if the numbers weren’t there, who was saying this?

The source of this new push to join Google+, it turned out, inevitably led back to Google. Yes, upper level Google staff had been telling tech bros, investors, and tastemakers Google+ was the future of social media. That trickled down to us plebes, the ones who would dutifully fulfill the prophecy.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the future of social media. It was a trainwreck that saw its few actual users spend 3-5 seconds per day on the platform compared to the hours per day people spent on Facebook.

Now, the “buyer’s remorse” over AI we’re seeing from all of these corporations feels very similar. It’s not users saying we need AI in every goddamn fucking thing, it’s AI companies. They're pushing a product tech overlords claim is the solution to a host of non-existant problems. And the comapnies got in line.

The difference this time is two-fold: Us plebes and commoners are fighting back and the companies that bought in are losing money. (At least a Google+ account was free.)

But, the truly shocking revelation is how fucking gullible these big CEOs are. They were told by AI salesmen that their already successful product will only continue to succeed if they bake in AI.

And what happened? One super fun example is how Google touted themselves as the best search engine in the world. Now, the first result on any search is an AI summary, followed with this warning in very small print:

That seems like a pretty clear admission that Google is not a reliable search engine any more.

So, I guess the moral of this story is: If you want to sell something for millions of dollars that no one needs, talk to a CEO.

Bonus moral: Google Search is the Google+ of Google.

oqmemphis

this seems like a good opportunity to recommend "Brainwash an Executive Today!" by Nik Suresh, who covers this idea in a bit more detail

TLDR: "There is a massive industry that is built around gathering people that fit the 'thinks LinkedIn is studying' profile into rooms, who also have access to organizational money, and then charging sales teams for permission to get into that room."

come solve my evil riddle

The SCP Foundation's 'top-secret' archives, declassified for your enjoyment.

(collab with @dino--draws, because if we have to read Yeats then so does everyone else!)

#oqm #scp wiki