The Rivers Flowed Clear and Blue

Muna . 31 . Uyghur . She/They bsky cohost

[sorairoknife]

[beesmygod]

you have to preface things like this with disclaimers that you are not pro-ai for people incapable of critical thinking but: its so awesome how much people post about AI having no soul and lacking humanity and merely mimicking some sort of innate Humanness while failing to address or contend with the fact that a lot of people are seemingly making work indistinguishable from the statistical average spit up by a computer.

[albi-mander]

ppl could ABSOLUTELY churn out bland slop that's trying very hard to scan as though it's legit way before AI showed up, and i stopped trying to tell if things were AI generated and started just...thinking more about whatever i was looking at. exploring citations rather than just looking at them, thinking about what's being said and if disparate thoughts connect to each other, trying to engage with the substance of the work. if there was little to no substance, then i could move on, and i'm sure a significant chunk of that was AI, but more importantly, it wasn't worth my time.

[beesmygod]

i genuinely and unironically hope that this is an unintended but positive outcome in a post-AI world. that people abandon attempts to determine if something is AI or not and are instead forced to think "what is there to like about this and why do i like it?"

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[creatingblackcharacters]

For anyone looking an explanation of the historical and contemporary tensions between the Black and Asian American community, and how that, too, is structural and fueled to benefit white supremacy. Proximity to Whiteness will never be Whiteness!

[wizardarchetypes]

i was like 'it's weird the way everyone is doing free pr for the catholic church rn just bc the pr for the new pope has already been that good' and someone was like 'wait? why don't you like the pope? did something happen?' i feel insane i'm not exaggerating i didn't even know what to say?? 'did something happen?' yes the last 2 thousand years of global history, and no, going back 2,000 years in catholic history is not dramatic because it's remained consistently that bad throughout and in fact i do think the church should answer for every single century of its sins while all of its assets are returned to the people from which they were stolen and its global power is dissolved.

[fandom-geek]

Homes set on fire in Belfast night of violence as MP says people targeted based on skin colour - follow live

On one street, hundreds of masked men carrying bottles and bricks set bins on fire and shouted "foreigners out", our reporter says.

i really don't have the words for how things have escalated to outright race riots in the last few weeks. just to collect a few of the stories the bbc is reporting in their live thread:

Families led to safety through flames (Dan Johnson) Homes were targeted and burned. Families had to be led to safety through the flames - rescued by emergency services risking their lives in the most dangerous situation. It’s what the authorities feared all day. What they warned against and pleaded not to see. The condemnation came quickly and was widespread. It wasn’t just homes, cars were also torched by young masked man in these predominantly unionist streets but the target here was immigrants and the message to entirely innocent families was: "You’re not welcome". In the north of the city, more people were forced to flee including an African family who’ve lived here for 20 years.

People being put out 'because they're black' - pastor A pastor who has been helping those in houses targeted in tonight's violence says people were being put out of their homes "because they're black". Pastor Jack McKee was at the scene where multiple houses were on fire around the Crumlin Road in north Belfast - he says some members of his church "who have been with us for 20 years" were "getting put out of their home, had their house attacked, windows smashed, houses beside them burned". "They're good Christian people and they're getting put out just because they're black," he says. "I'm doing my best to help them, it's as simple as that." [...]

Masked men shouting 'foreigners out' (Kelly Bonner) Last night on the Lower Newtownards Road in Belfast hundreds of masked men walked down the street carrying bottles, bricks and masonry. They set bins on fire and shouted "foreigners out". As they walked street to street, they were banging on doors, kicking doors down and breaking windows. Masked man set cars alight and at one point I witnessed them trying to burn a car until a woman came out of her home and told them it belonged to a "local and not a foreigner" and they stopped. A young family had to be moved from their home by police. The scenes of this young family fleeing their home were really quite shocking.

We're seeing a 'race-based pogrom' in Belfast, MP tells BBC Claire Hanna, Belfast MP and leader of the Social Democratic & Labour Party, has spoken to Newsnight about the "nightmarish" attack on Monday, which she says has "understandably revulsed and shocked" people in Belfast. However, she condemned the scenes that erupted on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting that "negative actors online and politicians locally who don't really care what communities in north Belfast have been through" have used the knife attack to incite violence and seed division. "What you're seeing is a race-based pogrom. We are seeing men going door to door asking to get the foreigners out based exclusively on the colour of their skin," she has said. "It's not based on what they're contributing to society, what their status here is and it's terrifying for people in Belfast who want this sort of politics to be far beyond them."

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

not to be a joyless hag but I've started seeing genderbent "yuri" shipping Markiplier and Ryan Gosling and I can't help but think of someone I recently I unfollowed for posting that they have an easier time caring about genderbent versions of boy characters than regular fictional women

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

and I'm also building some connections to that post I made about reading books by Black women (you know the one) and the people who would respond by saying something akin to "joke's on you, I only read fanfic 😜" as if that were some kind of clever loophole and not a demonstration of the exact thing I was talking about

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

like yes fandom is about fun or whatever but idk man at what point has your desire for no thoughts head empty uncritical consumption left you splashing around in something that's been blended down to an indistinguishable goo for the sake of avoiding anything remotely challenging. with the thing that's "challenging" here being. you know. giving a shit about women and Black people and like frankly anyone but your shippable white men (and honorary Markiplier).

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

don't make me tap the five year old teen vogue article, etc

Who Actually Gets to “Escape” Into Fandom?

All experiences of escapism are not created equally.

[evilrashida]

[mavigation]

the “i’m in your head” thing was the sickest shit i’ve ever seen i had no idea of the mind games that go on in the nba.

[mavigation]

legitimate psychological warfare

[messygoku]

igual ya quedó el precedente de lo mal que organizaron la Copa América, así que no quiero que nadie venga y se queje que no les avisaron que esta gente no está capacitada como para organizar un evento de esta magnitud, cuando ni pudieron con la Copa. Cuando el césped esté hecho pija, cuando los manden a viajar de costa a costa dentro del país, lo mal que manejaron la final. Voy a estar de la mano con Bielsa diciendo al unísono: les dijimos les dijimos les dijimos

[messygoku]

más cosas siguen saliendo

[manuciruja]

[alexsiple]

their name is nelly and they're annoying

[akajustmerry]

anyways, I'm still so angry over that Deadline article about Disney nuking Ncuti Gatwa's era of Doctor Who because of "woke" (not even kidding), because they received "overwhelming" feedback that the show was "too woke" for international audiences. It will never not piss me the fuck off how woke was/is literally aave for being politically aware that's been so co-opted by white establishment conservatives that this bastardised co-opted colonised concept of "woke" is now weaponised against Black people, people of colour and other marginalised people to justify casting us down and out. A literal fuckinf alien was played by a Black gay actor and old white people lost their shit and now a 60 yr old show is basically dead because some white people hated they weren't being directly pandered to. I'm never not gonna be pissed the fuck OFF

[akajustmerry]

Hey, people in the comments who said I was wrong about the show being dead because I could see the writing on the wall months ago....well, now there's the official announcement. I really hope that no one ever forgets that Doctor Who was cancelled because of anti-Blackness, racism, and corporate greed.

[sailatina3]

Why do white trans women treat the word doll like its an oppressive label forced upon them... grow up girl. No, no, thats an insult to children....

[sailatina3]

Seriously, whats with the ignorance regarding this term? It's not some cringe shit by cis gays like most queer/tme terminology tends to be. It's a word invented by Black/latina trans women... it's not the death of you. Come on now...

[sailatina3]

Help the crackers are doing this annoying shit in the notes

[plaidos]

[butchniqabi]

see the thing about iwtv is that i will always believe louis no matter what unless claudia says something different. then i believe claudia. lestat could tell me that it's raining during a thunderstorm and id need a peer review.

[icedsodapop]

If we are going by this logic, then neither was Daniel Penny justified in using deadly force against Jordan Neely just becos Neely was scaring other train passengers. But the white guy who killed a Black man got to walk free and now has a pretty good job at some venture capital firm despite not having the necessary job qualifications or experiences, while the Black kid who stabbed a white kid in self-defence got 35 years in jail 🤡

[peacereturnedtothevalley]

I can't stop saying The Strugglerrrrrrrr

[walk-up-songs]

Bought my uncle a burger and milkshake in exchange for letting me disrupt the holiest day of the week, NFL Sunday Football, so I could install a Pi-hole and free the household of ads...the thing abt the specific boomers I live with is they told me not to trust people on the Internet but they do not understand the algorithm or online advertising and think that Facebook has their best interests at heart. And every time I have tried to explain to them that no, blorbo from my dashboard is not selling my kidneys on the dark web but Google from your capitalism is definitely selling your web searches to every advertising company on the planet, they think I am paranoid. How could their personal friend Mark Zuckerberg want anything bad to happen to them etc. I am fighting battles I did not know existed!!!

[walk-up-songs]

Update I have had Pi-Hole successfully installed for two (2) hours and have since learned that 40% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. FORTY FUCKING PERCENT. We live in hell. This is the greatest gift I have ever given my family that they will not understand or acknowledge or feel any gratitude for.

[walk-up-songs]

Update #2: it was rising all night but the number it finally settled on was...60%. 60% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. I can't tell if this high number is bc I live in Silicon Valley and probably am subject to the Algorithmic Internet in ways people outside of Silicon Valley are not or it is normal to have 2/3rds of your web traffic be ads, but it did make me set up a recurring donation of the EFF lmfao.

[walk-up-songs]

Okay I have had multiple people ask, so here are the useful websites that me and Beryl used to muddle our way through:

Using Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi (on the Raspberry Pi website, really good overview of what Pi-hole does)

Tumblr-archived Twitter thread about one household's experience with Pi-hole (this is what sold me on it. Also the tweets were published in 2022 and Pi-hole is actively being developed, so I think some of the teething problems he mentioned might have cleared up or are at least being addressed.)

Pi-hole website (gives broad strokes of the software and imho is not actually that helpful, however this proves that I am not making shit up)

Pi-hole documentation (read prerequisites carefully, you do NOT need the newest model of Raspberry Pi to run this thing!! You don't even need a Raspberry Pi at all, you can run it on a bunch of Linux systems however I'm very stupid when it comes to Linux and when my options are install and learn a whole ass new OS or spend $$ on a Raspberry Pi and hook it up to my TV with a wired mouse and keyboard I will unfortunately be spending money)

Privacy International's guide to setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi (bro this one saved our asses)

You guys can ask me questions if you want but I guarantee I will not know the answers bc I don't know shit about fuck, I just followed the directions and reaped the rewards. It did take us 2 hours to set up bc I'm bad at following directions (and it's kind of complicated if you've been out of the software game for a while like I have), and you do have to be sososo brave about fucking around with your internet provider's configuration. So make sure you eat before you do it!! However it has been so worth it for me so far, given that now all my devices at home are running faster and I'm not seeing any ads while web browsing. We will see what complaints my family comes up with, but I love it so far.

Also!! if you've never heard of Raspberry Pi, which I realize are not all of my followers are lost in the Silicon Valley sauce so you might not have, here's is their website and their page for using Raspberry Pi at home.

(And here is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that fights for digital privacy, free speech, and innovation, if you, like me, were presented with cold hard data about your personal internet usage and suddenly realized that our internet is fully a dystopia. haha.)

[veliseraptor]

can't believe it's only tuesday. it feels like it should be at least wednesday and honestly really thursday

[mikkeneko]

Happy feels like it should be at least wednesday and honestly really thursday tuesday