A Universe of Random

Should be writing, probably not writing.

[anarchistmemedistro]

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

[megaceros]

love that energy

[spooksier]

my friend took in a stray and she’s the cutest kitty ever but he named her oil so whenever he sends a picture of her me and my other friends look like we’re roleplaying as the US military

[spooksier]

[spooksier]

in our defense this is oil

[littleguysdaily]

[little-red-cover]

✨️Pursuit of Jade Book Recs✨️

QOTD: Do you have any dramas you've watched recently that you've really enjoyed?

I have been (obviously) obsessed with Pursuit of Jade! After finishing the show I have been craving books that feel similar to fill the new hole in my soul.

I will also now forever be fan-casting Wenzhi as Zhang Linghe and Liewei as Ren Hao when I reread Daughter of the Moon Goddess. They just fit so well in my little brain 🫣

[haleyatwell]

COLMAN DOMINGO as DANNY THE FOUR SEASONS (2025–) 1.02 Garden Party

[eddiescoffee]

Sorry this has probably already been posted but. This is sending me

Frog build looking bitch. Barrel chested ewok u look like u eat sand

[olyphant-tim]

Daniel Ings as Lyonel Baratheon A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS (2026–) cr. by Ira Parker, George R.R. Martin

[goetic-justice]

You guys are always like "being crushed by 10,000 tons of rock probably feels good as hell" or "being torn to pieces by hunting dogs would low key fix me" and I feel like those things would actually be unpleasant.

[goetic-justice]

How about "Drinking an ice cold strawberry milkshake probably feels good as hell". Do you guys like that one.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[skipppppy]

So can non-disabled people stop doing that thing where they act like it’s morally righteous to force yourself to work while you’re sick and assume taking sick days automatically equates to laziness. Any time now. That’d be great

[skipppppy]

The leader of the scout group I help out at approached me out of hours while I was walking to work to tell me that people have been talking behind my back because I missed more sessions than I attended this term (on account of having Covid twice) and was like “We all show up when we’re sick because we take responsibility” and I felt really shitty and guilty and cried the whole workday then I got home and told my mum and she was like “So they want you to throw up on the kids? That’s dodgy. They don’t even pay you. Stop going” and a wave of serenity hit me like a bus

[cungadero]

i hate viruses so fucking much. literally getting attacked by a fucking shape. a concept. consumes no energy. responds to no stimuli. its only existence is to fuck with you. like fuck offf

[thrice-the-nobling]

prev's tags are too good not to save

[grungekitty-77]

It's happening again, so just to remind everyone:

TUMBLR ADS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO AUTO-PLAY AUDIO! THAT IS A BUG AND YOU SHOULD REPORT IT!

"This ad is auto-playing audio" is literally on the drop down menu for reporting an ad. Tumblr isn't trying to implement this! Don't protest this "new policy", cause it's not one.

Report the broken ads.

Thank you.

[jackson-imbecille]

They are not supposed to automatically redirect you without you clicking them, they are not supposed to cause a pop-up, they are not supposed to freeze your screen.

This is all bugs or malicious advertising which is also against tumblers ad policy. You should report all ads which do this.

Let’s get rid of those horrible monopoly ads, together.

[babushkaat]

[hunter-rodrigez]

kitty perfect weight for picking up for cuddles! kitty very Soft and warm and will purr comfortably in your arms. Pick up kitty. no problems ever when picking up kitty because good weight and size for picking up after surgery.

[quaintpanic]

I WAS BORN YESTERDAY. I JUST BLEW IN FROM STUPID TOWN. THIS IS MY FIRST RODEO. PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH ME.

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[santhipoma]

[partywithponies]

Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???

[urlocalpyshcopan]

as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name

[brainsforbabyjesus]

for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!

[infamousbrad]

I think I know how this works.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.

[kagedtiger]

Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm

[jayalaw]

What’s the solution then? Or if there’s no solution, should we make things even queerer and more diverse?

[itsalwaysdark]

you have to be careful reading too many things that are good/smart/well-written bc then you encounter something that isnt and you get confused like ? why didnt they just make this good ? were they stupid

[commodoresays]