could be, captain. you know how it is @pliny-the-youngest - Tumblr Blog

Dogs serve as a kind of virtue eater for Americans to pour all of their kindness into without the risk of improving society or being nice to someone with any agency

lizzibennet

opens news article. closes three pop up ads. backs out of the survey page i was redirected to. closes a pop up video ad. rejects cookies to make the cookie window go away. dismisses the requests to receive notifications from the website and the offers to sign up for it. dodges ninja lasers and poisonous arrow traps. body of the page is finally visible. i have reached my monthly limit and can’t read the article

enki2

thebdelliumlady

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.

chapscher

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).

homunculus-argument

You know you've fucked up when you go to a doctor and the thing you have wrong with you has been named after an occupation that isn't a thing anymore. Like imagine a doctor looking at you and going "yeah you've got ox-drawn ploughman's disease. We don't even test for that anymore. Yeah the reason you've never heard of it is because the last known case was in 1927 and happened to some guy who was like 98 years old and didn't believe in modern medicine of the time. What the fuck have you been up to."

vidrig

Here in Sweden we have a pretty active larping community and many of them have a historical setting. I remember a story of a really awesome WW2 larp where, unfortunately, one of the participants hadn't removed his boots for three days straight and it rained the whole time. His feet suffered so much that he had to be taken to the hospital, which was a sight to behold. See, this guy covered in mud and wearing authentic WW2 gear had managed to get an incredibly historically correct case of trench foot. From a trench.

a-bed-of-moss-deactivated202605

Peer reviewed! Too good to leave!

charseraph

asteroidtroglodyte

When I got Gout and the doctor told me the diagnosis I laughed so hard the doctor then asked me if I was on any psych meds. I was just like “wait so I got Old Timey Rich Person Disease?”

Roughly paraphrasing his response: “well by your own admission you live on a diet of shellfish and wine, and you came into my office dressed like a vampire. Like. Yea man you gave yourself Gout. You want me to check you for Consumption while I’m at it? Go eat some vegetables, please.”

The most modern of medicine is no match for a Human who insists upon recreating the behaviors of their ancestors, it would seem.

dyinginthearctic

i'm going to [remembers suicide jokes have a negative impact on my mental health] be unwell, gentlemen. quite unwell, i expect. and i don't know for how long. a week? no, two. perhaps... perhaps more

gay-irl

judgejudyofficial

yeah u freaks up north look and sound exactly like this when u pretend that us southern queers are perfectly complicit in our own eradication - for the heinous crime of not living in a liberal population center.

hoshikostar

glitterygolem

I keep this image on hand for whenever I see similar sentiments.

charismat1c-megafauna

See also: "just leave!!! Why don't you leave!!!" Ok sure. Let me abandon all of my friends, my family, people who depend on me for help, my entire support network, job, resources, and all of the places I have ever loved so I can rent a closet in a city in a blue state that still has active Nazi chapters with no guarantee of a job.

This is my fucking home. Moreover, some of us actually like rural living. We shouldn't have to forsake everything we love about our way of life for y'all to consider us worthy of care and respect.

wizardarchetypes

absolutely looosssinggg it. i'm so obsessed with movies which portray the woman MC in a highly specific job because the writers clearly think it's like "off-beat" and "quirky" but have no idea how the field works whatsoever.

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

it's a quirk unique to this MC that she cares so much about paintings, in her department at the metropolitan museum of art, where her colleagues find all that art business rather dreary. because we all know that's what conservators in extremely competitive museum positions are like.

wizardarchetypes

I'm not saying there can't be lifelong love in here somewhere but I also just feel like the monogamous heterosexual marriage you're fantasizing about isn't necessarily best represented by the bacchanal. and that's okay. but i do stand by that.

m3atbuff3t

i coul dnever be the captain of a ship. everyday id be like third lieutenant ..... do a backflip lol

necrophilologist

in this dark age of censorship, remember that if ovid managed to stay a pervert during the moralising tyranny of the augustan age, you can do the same now. don't worry about what happened to him next

stjohnstarling

Does anyone pronounce AU (the fanfiction category) like a piercing cry?

playwrongs

KASSANDRA: Auauau, O Apollo, O Apollo!

CHORUS OF ARGIVE ELDERS: Why do you cry "au au" in the name of Loxias? He has naught to do with coffee shops.

cheaphalloweencostume

The iron hook slid free from his shoulder with a wet metallic shriek. Something black and arterial splashed across the stones between them.

The torturer stepped back instinctively. Not out of mercy. Out of surprise. The prisoner laughed. Not loudly. Worse than loudly. Softly. Like he had just remembered a private joke older than civilization.

“You still think pain is a language,” he said.

Another blow. This time across the mouth. Teeth cracked. Blood sheeted down his chin in long ribbons.

The interrogator hissed through clenched teeth. “Tell me where God went.”

The prisoner turned his head slowly. There was blood in his smile now.

“There are organisms,” he said, “living beneath Antarctic ice that have never seen the sun and have still learned how to eat.”

The room had gone very still. Somewhere in the dark, machinery groaned.

The interrogator grabbed him by the jaw hard enough to bruise bone.

“You think this makes you immortal?”

The prisoner spat a clot of red onto the floor between them.

“No,” he whispered.

“I think it makes you temporary.”

The torches flickered.

For one impossible second, the interrogator became aware of his own pulse. The heat in his veins. The soft wetness of his eyes. The damp animal electricity inside every living thing. The prisoner watched realization bloom across his face and smiled wider, blood running between his teeth.

“You cannot threaten a creature from the dirt,” he said, “with returning to the dirt.”

— excerpt from Shit I Just Made Up To Exemplify How All This Tumblr Prose Sounds