Born to be a heroine...but still in training for my great adventure. Spend a lot of time submitting to various incorrectquotes blogs. Come here for geekery, stay for insanity.
not all of us can live in fantasy 100% the time like i see some people on here do and it's refreshing to learn something new. its been philosophy, essays, and history for me and i feel much more at home on planet Earth for it knowing that people have been struggling and wishing similarly for millenia.
its not that fiction doesnt have its place, its important and healthy to exercise the imagination, but non-fiction can do so much to boost and supplement that. if not for yourself, for your art or for the people you're around
this version of the post doesnt seem to be getting much traction but this is arguably the most important reason why we should be reading nonfiction in addition to fiction
Yep. This is terrifying. I’ve caught nursing majors, engineering majors, architecture majors relying on ChatGPT to do their homework. These are people who need to know their field well to ensure people don’t die and they’re letting a glorified algorithm cheat them through school. It’s so dangerous
hey. hi. I work in academia. and there are a lot of student-age folks on this site.
don't do this. don't use genAI. even if your professors give you permission. even if they ask for it or suggest it. if they do anything short of directly requiring it (and I weep, because I've already seen assignments that require it) don't touch that crap. if they do require it, stick it to them. be as maliciously compliant as possible. be a nightmare.
I know it might sound easier right now -- just plug in your assignment and get the answers. you don't care about this class anyway, it's not for your major, you don't see the value of the assignment.
but for your own sake, for the sake of your education and mind, and for the sake of the future world we want to have: learn the stuff. you are not as stupid as the corporate bizzaro kings who want to rule the world think you are, so don't give them reasons to believe it.
and odds are good genAI is gonna give you corrupted info anyway -- more and moreso as the machines cannibalize themselves.
just don't do it. not even "I just do it for XYZ--" no. stop. there is no valid use of generative AI, and even using it for memes or lolz feeds the system and directly feeds the pockets of the people who want to replace you anyway.
Rage reblogging this. Yesterday i got into an argument with one of my college friends who is using chatGPT to do all her work. We're psychology students. The whole group chat laughed my arguments off as if they didn't matter because "she's an artist, of course she's anti-AI" and i had to deal with it. This is a warning. If your therapist graduated in 2023/2024, ask about their opinions on chatGPT. They might lie to you if you ask "did you use it to graduate" directly, but try to make jokes about it and play it cool. If they're into it, DROP OFF. FIND A NEW ONE. Do not trust your brain to someone who didn't bother to use theirs.
Some anesthesiologists will refuse to put you under if you’ve smoked cannabis within the past 24 hours – and let’s be clear, this is NOT because they’re morally against it – it’s because THC and anesthetic react in unpredictable ways and waking up in the middle of surgery is slightly less of a concern than SLIPPING INTO A COMA OR DYING.
Yes, this too. Should have included this. It just wasn’t on my mind when I made the original post because my mind was full of NOPE NOPE NOPE after, you guessed it, one of my patients woke up in the middle of her surgery because she didn’t tell her anesthesia team she used marijuana.
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
Now THAT’S a self care resource! If you’ve gotten distracted by capitalism’s appropriation of “self-care” and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
What we need is a new social movement. Not a political one. An artistic one.
We need people to make rebellion cool again. To idealize free thinking, free loving, free choices about our bodies.
We need influencers on the opposite side from the Andrew Tates and Manosphere.
We need music and fashion and film glorifying freedoms that oppose right wing authoritarian ideals. That embrace feminism and queerness and being a freak.
And we need a unifying identity for all these things. We need an identity like hippies, punk rock. The right is so good at coming together and the left is far too good at fracturing.
Modern media and social media companies have divided us all up into smaller and smaller social circles. Micro-identities. "Youth" used to be a social group. "Voice of a generation" was a thing. Now everyone is expected to be the voice of like...30 people.
What I'm saying here is just what I keep thinking about. What is the alternative to the tradwives and the Alpha Male podcasters? A bunch of intellectual politics nerds? Yeah, I mean thanks and all, but we need excitement. We need art.
Things are going to get worse and worse. The right is going to be selling limitations and restrictions and we need to be selling the alternative.
So if you're an artist, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, an internet personality...get together with everyone you know who is also creative. Start talking with each other about how you create rebellious art, and how you create community in that art.
There's so much emotion floating around, so much fear and dread and exhaustion and we need to channel all that into art. It's the only way we win. Art is always how we make progress. But if you're making it alone, it doesn't build steam, it doesn't become a movement. You have to gather together. You don't all have to make the same thing. But you do need to have the same spirit. One determined to uplift what is good and fight what is evil.
Make art, people. Create an identity from it. Welcome everyone who is lost and scared. Lonely, sad, scared people get sucked into right wing circles because there's no alternative. Be the alternative.
mod-ellisa-and-lynn:
You should check out your local Burn community! That is what you are looking for!
So here's the thing about Burn. While the art and environment may be very cool and meaningful for the people who are there, none of that is filtering out of the time and space whatsoever.
I guarantee you, no one who is not at Burn gives two shits about anything anyone has ever done for it. You're making art for only the people who can afford admission and afford to travel and all the costs involved in attending. It's having absolutely ZERO impact on the culture as a whole.
That's literally EXACTLY what I'm talking about. It's just a small, isolated, sheltered community who only talks to itself. It's essentially a private club, only making art for members.
That's NOT a mass movement. It's not going to BECOME a mass movement, because there are so many barriers to entry. And you can say well it will filter out, people will take inspiration and take it into their lives and it will eventually take over society. But, uh, that hasn't happened. Literally at all.
And this is the story of the left in a nutshell. We isolate and lock ourselves away and fracture and splinter into ever smaller communities while the right takes over mass media.
Burning Man has been happening for 34 years and in that time culture has only trended more and more conservative and conformist and less friendly to art. So no, I don't think that's what I'm looking for.
But this IS a good conversation to bring up next time you're with your Burn friends.
This is an excellent article. It talks about the psychology of tyranny, the history of resistance and the paths we have to take to rescue each other and recover.
A Pragmatic and surprisingly comforting perspective about the Trump 2nd Presidency from the ACLU
***Apologies if this is how you found out the 2024 election results***
Blacked out part is my name.
I’m not going to let this make me give up. It’s disheartening, and today I will wallow, probably tomorrow too
AND
I will continue to do my part in my community to spread the activism and promote change for the world I want to live in. I want to change the world AND help with the dishes.
And I won’t let an orange pit stain be what stops me from trying to be better.
A link to donate to the ACLU if able and inclined. I know I am
As the Trump administration moves toward the White House, the stakes could never be higher. But the ACLU is ready to fight back!
As Presi
If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...
Start helping with citizen science projects
Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
--
I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help
Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.
Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.
It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.
I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.
It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.
Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes
(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)
MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)
Smithsonian archives (transcriptions, many subjects)
Cornell Bird Lab (birds)
FoldIt (folding proteins)
Fathomverse (sea animals)
Project Monarch (butterflies)
In person
Bioblitz (nature)
Species watch (species)
Audobon Society (birds)
Also:
Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.
This stuff makes a huge difference.
Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.
I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now
So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead
I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.
Volunteer from your phone. Make a difference worldwide.
From their website:
Data Everywhere
In today's technology-filled world, we have access to vast amounts of information at our fingertips. This includes geospatial data, which helps us understand places and the “where?” of things - a vitally important piece of successful humanitarian programs. It is important for getting from point A to point B as well as for coordination, understanding needs, tracking impact, identifying gaps, and a multitude of other concerns. For responsible use by humanitarians, this information must be assessed, refreshed, and validated as populations, infrastructure, and the surrounding environments experience the inevitable changes that occur as time, conflicts, and disasters unfold...
MapSwipe is a free open source mobile application available on iOS and Android that empowers anyone with a smartphone to make a meaningful impact contributing to global mapping efforts. MapSwipe crowdsources the review of satellite imagery to:
I don't know who needs to hear this, but it has been a central Republican strategy in the final week before an election to claim that the polls are breaking their way, that a red wave is coming, that Republicans are engaging in victory tours at least since the presidential election of 2000. (That's when I stopped watching CNN regularly, as the network promoted this line despite the fact that Gore would go on to win the popular vote.)
Given that Republicans have, in fact, only won the popular vote once in this period (2004), this is a strategy, not a statement of fact.
Don't sweat the narrative. Vote. Turnout wins, not news stories.
what's with the weird glorification of smoking that's come back lately
like
I've seen so many posts that paint opposing smoking as some impossibly Loser-ish or puritanical stance and I really don't get it
it makes you, your house, and your clothing stink, destroys your teeth, and gives you lung cancer. opposing it is. Correct. obviously addiction is very complicated and quitting can be hard, but just saying "smoking is gross and harmful as a practice (including vaping)" is True and Right actually
some of you have never grown up hearing about how some beloved family member died a slow, agonized, wasting death of smoking-induced cancer, or watching it firsthand for yourself, and it shows
Find the information you need to make registration and voting easy. Official voter registration website of the United States government.
In many US states, this week is your last chance to register for the upcoming election.
Please don’t let this wait. Please go get registered—or if you’re registered already, check your registration to make sure it is still valid. Numerous states have been purging “ineligible voters”: so please doublecheck that you haven’t been purged by mistake
If you’re all set, then please encourage everyone you know to register, or to check their own registrations.
