Questionably Extant

It's fine, it's fine, I totally know how to like something a normal amount

[fageleh]

hobbies should not take up this much space. there ought to be a hobby pocket dimension, where I am able to store everything I need in a breadbox that weighs no more than my cat.

[escuerzoresucitado]

[elksewer]

[mercurys-in-retrograde]

let the contemporary record show mr beast was pretty ignorable for his whole career if you were just like, busy.

[whatapictureisworth-press]

So it’s been awhile since I’ve bound anything, but when I read the Cursed Amulet Story by @sunderwight, I was like, I gotta make an actual, physical evil amulet now. Except the evil amulet is also going to be a book. And the book is like a diary by the guy trapped in the amulet.

The book is held in the brass frame (also made by yours truly) by friction; it pops out super easily so you can read it but it’s not going to fall out accidentally.

The typeset fit into exactly one piece of normal 8.5x11 printer paper, and if anyone else wants the file to make their own evil amulet, I’m happy to share.

[asmeesh]

1$ flea market score. Tiny glass 1960s perfume bottles. I love them.

[shit-show-no-go]

Can you swap their heads ?

[asmeesh]

omg you can

[asmeesh]

Their meeting was foretold in the ancient texts

[theinvisiblespoon]

[thefiresontheheight]

Burgers were a type of meat and bread confection[1] and cultural symbol[2][3] popular during the Late Capitalist[4][5] and Early Collapse[6] Periods of the Ancient Yankee State[7].

[algoresextape]

don’t act like you aren’t hyped to eat my girlfriend’s burgers

[thefiresontheheight]

Girlfriends were a socio-cultural class[1] of warrior-priestesses[2][3] revered[4] or worshipped[5] across much of the modern Turtle Island Steppe region during the Late Collapse and Early Road Warrior Periods[6][7][8].

[algoresextape]

wait do they not have girlfriends in the future????

[thefiresontheheight]

(Redirected from “The Future”)

Temporalism is a disproven[1][2][3][4] pseudo-scientific[5][6][7][8][9] belief that events follow from cause to effect along a linear direction of motion which is understandable or intelligible by sapient minds[10].

[maidslime]

Ok like. Imagine life without ads. You wake up, check your messages across a variety of apps, no ads. You get up and put on the tv while you prep your breakfast, no ads. Maybe you drive somewhere and switch on the radio, no ads. Maybe you drive a long distance, yet somehow, not a single billboard on your path. You pick up a newspaper or magazine to pass the time, no advertisements only articles. You turn on your game console, the home screen is just about your games, no ads to buy more. You open a streaming app, you don't pay extra for no ads, there's just no ads ever.

Think about how much of your time is spent looking at ads. "Download ublock" yeah I know, I have. But that doesn't change that the world is covered with endless advertising. Imagine never seeing that again. How much better our lives would be.

[persisting]

I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

[ruffboi-mags]

Like I'm nearing 40 and I don't feel significantly different as a person than I did at 20, other than being less depressed.

I know I'm different bc i respond in different ways to things now, but there's not a sense of "ah yes I am become adult" that's for fuckin sure. It's normal. It's okay. So stop infantilizing yourselves about it.

[ceekari]

And stop infantilizing others about it, too. Yes, you're realizing at 25 that you still don't feel like an adult, but you cannot use that feeling to let yourself think of people who are younger than you as "even less of an adult than I am" when they are, in fact, adults. And you have to be very, very careful not to let that feeling convince you that it's okay for young adults to have fewer rights.

There's no age at which you magically stop being worried that you're not doing it right or well enough. Every single person alive is the oldest they've ever been and we are ALL winging it. Being scared of getting it wrong doesn't mean that you shouldn't be allowed to get it wrong.

[attackofopportunity]

It is universal, and it doesn't end.

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[catasters]

[cute-catts]

[aniseandspearmint]

The mighty hunter brought home a WHOLE MAMMOTH aren't you impressed?

[misidentifying-animals-in-posts]

Saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis)

[deadpowol]

[snazzy-hats-and-adhd]

He's Participating!

[primarybufferpanel]

You don't understand, he's doing it for spiritual fulfillment, not for monetary gain. It's much more pure that way.

[importantcatpics]

[rosalesbeausderholle]

One thing that worries me about the use of AI is whether or not it can worsen people's dementia and alzheimer's in the future. When my grandmother was first diagnosed, we got her math activity books. Now, my grandmother never had a formal education, but we did our best to keep her sharp, get her to do math and writing activity books, sudokus, playing board games that required some level of strategizing with her. Her family is prone to alzheimer's and dementia (both her siblings had it and deteriorated very very very quickly, which yeah, scares the shit out of me being her granddaughter) but she was the one whose mind lasted the longest, she only passed away two years ago, at 88, ten whole years after her initial diagnosis and sure, she had forgotten things, recipes and where she put her glasses and appointments, but she never forgot any of us, ten whole years in, she still remembered us. Now, this may have been luck, but doctors always said the constant mental work + companionship + medicine helped her a lot. So I'm thinking, these people who are now relying on AI for everything, from email-writing to thinking what's for dinner to casual conversations, I've even seen people rely on it to calculate what time they should leave their house if they need to be at a place at a specific time and their commute lasts X number of minutes. As if that's not... the simplest math operation possible? You shouldn't even need a calculator for that!!! Idk I don't know how long it'll take us to see the effects of this + exposure to brain-rotting short form content that is completely meaningless + people addicted to right-wing conspiracy style media. Idk I'm very worried. Please, read, read complicated books! Take up a book on philosophy and try to decipher it and make your own opinions on it, please buy a maths activity book and relearn how to do math, please get a hobby that involves lots of thinking and concentrating. PLEASE!!!

[notalotgoingonatthisinstant]

As a neurologist, I’ll give you the pretty name for it: cognitive reserve.

The way I explain it to my patients is that our neurons don’t regenerate. They make connections with each other and that’s it. If you don’t use your brain, they make fewer connections and, if one of them dies, you’re gonna miss it, because that was the only one that knew how to do X. Now, if each one of them has many, many connections, you won’t notice the difference when one of them dies. The others pick up the slack.

As of 2024, 45% of dementia risk factors are modifiable. Relevant to this conversation, 5% for less education and 5% for social isolation.

We absolutely are going to see the reflection of this, but it’s gonna take decades and it’ll be too late. So, for the love of your brain, pretend that it’s a muscle and make it work. People complain about “when am I ever gonna use this maths formula in my life?” You’re not. You’re teaching your brain to think logically. Those sinapses will be there for when you need to figure out your week’s schedule. English classes taught me how to interpret data and how to convey it in this text so it’s clear and you understand what I’m saying, not because I needed to justify why the curtain is blue.

Make your brain know how to do different things. Logic games, puzzles, taking care of a garden even if small, planning a church’s event or birthday, learn a new instrument, learn a few words in another language, look at a calendar every day, do some manual labor if possible. Do not, I repeat, do not let your brain get rid of sinapses by letting AI do everything. Your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy — do you really think it’s going to maintain connexions that aren’t in use?

Most cases of Alzheimer’s are sporadic, meaning no family history. Family history of a first-degree relative with Alzheimer’s starting before they were 80yo increases your risk in 2-3x on average.

TLDR: Yes. From the knowledge we have today, AI will increase the number and severity of dementia cases.

[primarybufferpanel]

People who use AI a lot make me think of those people in hoover chairs in Wall-e

[tlbodine]

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

[prof-grace-aspen]

Also, you don't have to like, delete it from existence. Keep a second document full of the Darlings. You never know when you'll need it later.

[earhartsease]

yes, your killed darlings are ripe for rebirth

[eldritchsandwich]

compost your darlings

recycle your darlings

Darlings who don't fit this narrative go into the use later folder

[primarybufferpanel]

Personally I do feel that if you are particularly fond of a specific unusual word (completely random example, 'onyx') you should give yourself a tight wordbudget for using that word in a figurative manner

[zoirohs]

MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES

3.03, Murder & Mozzarella

[beardedmrbean]