Ramblings of a Poké-Nerd

A nerdy Canadian who spends too much time on the internet. (she/her) Content includes Pokémon and assorted fandoms, food, feminism, social justice, sex positivity, writing, language.

[the-sweaty-toothed-mad-woman]

today’s the only day you can reblog this

“There Will Come Soft Rains”, Ray Bradbury

[the-quasar-hero]

“Why does this character have to be Black?”

Why shouldn’t they be?

“Why does this character have to be a woman?”

Why shouldn’t she be?

“Why does this character have to be gay?”

Why shouldn’t they be?

“Why does this character have to be trans?”

Why shouldn’t they be?

“Why does this character have to be disabled?”

Why shouldn’t they be?

“Why does this character have to be fat?”

Why shouldn’t they be?

[psychms]

@dashcon-two was AMAZING!

I met so many lovely, awesome folks, attended the most silly events and the most fascinating panels, exchanged so many fun trinkets, enjoyed my allotted time in the ballpit, added my blorbo to the wall, and just had such a special experience overall. Huge shout-out to the con runners, volunteers, and attendees that made it great!

I hope to share more of my thoughts and feelings around the whole experience, but for now enjoy the photo dump!

[free-my-mindd]

[pillowspace]

There are many people who don’t share this sentiment, but I have an appreciation for when a fanfic is so separated from canon that it could’ve easily been its own original novel, and yet the author was only ever going to put that much energy into it if their favourite characters got to be there

[pillowspace]

I think there’s a difference between “the author stripped the media of everything it had to replace it with something easy” and “the author thought up a concept they really really like and are bestowing it upon the character like a medal”

[edgebug]

Toronto I am in you

[strange-aeons]

[victusinveritas]

[black-crested-jaybird]

I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.

[makingtrouble]

Give yourself the treat before you start. I'm serious. And ideally during the task and afterwards too.

Executive dysfunction comes from a lack of available dopamine. Common advice is wrong. You need to provide your own dopamine before you can start. Otherwise you're trying to run your car on empty.

"But what if I still don't do it" well you already weren't getting it done anyway. Now you have a little treat. Try again later.

You deserve kindness and care even when you aren't being productive.

(Also read How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis)

[twwings]

I give my students a LOT of techniques for starting writing when it feels overwhelming or daunting, but one of them is exactly this: dopamine load BEFOREHAND. It may sound weird to people on tumblr dot com, but a lot of people seriously struggle with executive dysfunction when it comes to writing literally anything, to the extent that it can cause such symptoms as panic, depression, and AI chatbot use.

I usually suggest this technique as a "Reverse Pomodoro." In the original Pomodoro, you work for 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes (the times vary, but that's the essential ratio). People with executive dysfunction often find this insurmountable, and they get even more frustrated, and then the task seems even more difficult. So instead, flip those times.

FIRST, spend 25 minutes doing something energizing and engaging that you like to do. Not scrolling social media passively, not watching tv, not napping. Try something like colouring, doing yoga, running/walking around the block, talking about your favourite tv show with someone in real time, playing with the dog or cat, making and eating a lovely sandwich, hula hooping, something active. Having a little treat absolutely falls in this category!

(on the subject of little treats: refusing yourself food until you do work is for fucking Puritans and you can be kinder to yourself)

Then, after 25 minutes (or however long it takes to eat the sandwich or finish the yoga routine, it doesn't have to be exact), spend 5 minutes writing (or doing whatever you're struggling to start). Most people can coax themselves into doing something they find difficult for five minutes, if they have already filled up the joy/energy/engagement bucket. You can put a timer on for the 5 minutes if you want, or if you find that annoying, just work for as long as you like.

The other key is: don't push yourself to keep going when you're frustrated or tired—that will just reinforce the negative belief that you already have, which tells you that this task is painful to do, and needs to be avoided. If you've commonly had to force yourself to do this kind of task, that's likely part of why you think of it as painful and have trouble starting it now. Also, you should just, at a basic level, try not to put yourself in pain for the sake of productivity. So just do it till the good feelings run out. Then start hula hooping or colouring again for another 25 minutes. When the tank's refilled, try another 5 minutes of work, if you can. Adjust times to taste.

Not every technique works for everyone, but I've seen this one work for many students who are genuinely and seriously disabled by executive dysfunction. And many people find themselves getting more and more excited and engaged in the "difficult" task—because the good feelings from the hula hooping carry over, and because they're suddenly able to do the task without feeling pain, and feel accomplishment without feeling pain.

[tzikeh]

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

[boyslit]

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

[eclipticasolaris]

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

[antisocialxconstruct]

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

[dovewithscales]

I worked in retail for years. If this had happened while I was working retail, I would have been delighted and felt great solidarity with anyone who was wasting my employer's time and money and giving me busy work as an act of protest. In point of fact every moment the employee spends carting items back to the shelves is a moment not spent standing at a register.

[birdsareblooming]

thinking about this tag on my post again. i'm saying this all the time forever

[birdsareblooming]

oh i'm also saying this one all the time forever

[souplover13]

images: tags.

#nothing is above critique but also so many ppl are dogshit at criticism so here we are

#nothing is above critique and that includes your critiques

end image descriptions.

[cupcakedex]

Ansha's Pokemon and Pride donuts we made on stream! 🍩

As part of our annual fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, I cosplayed as Ansha from Pokemon Legends ZA, and donors challenged me to use different ingredients to make Pokemon donuts, which resulted in some really fun designs! That Pikachu holding a sour belt Pride flag then inspired me to make Ansha's rainbow Pokeball donuts as Pride flags as part of our Pokemon Pride desserts series during our next stream! 🏳️‍🌈

This entire concept was so much fun and a great cap to our fundraiser, but it had to come together in a pretty short time frame! Huge shout-out to my friend E for sewing Ansha's apron, and my wife for painting on the Pokeball donut design! I'd hoped to be more involved in the cosplay creation, but dang it was a busy month, so their help meant the world in making this happen - for the kids! 😁

[crimethinc]

While Trump’s henchmen dishonestly claim that ICE is targeting “criminals,” the real wrongdoers are those who do harm to their neighbors in return for a bribe.

Our counter-recruitment poster against ICE, seen wheatpasted across middle America.

You can put them up, too:

https://crimethinc.com/mercenaries

[drpepperwhoree]

remember that pride is still a protest

[headspace-hotel]

I'm dead convinced that a significant portion of AI companies' revenue is spent paying off every major media outlet NOT to point out all the obvious problems with it + creating legions of bots and bullshit articles online to hype AI up

cause like. apart from the (potential) exception of writing code, there is not really anything useful that a Large Language Model can do.

it imitates patterns in the text that it takes in

that's fundamentally how it works

if a Large Language Model can produce text that looks like something a human created, that doesn't mean it can do a human's job, it means that the paperwork/plan/document it's being used to create no longer fucking means anything

[headspace-hotel]

Yes, haha funny, the AI is bamboozled by spelling, but seriously: I asked Google the same question 5 different times just now, and not only did I get 5 incorrect answers, I got 5 completely different incorrect answers.

The fact that they're different every time demonstrates just how much of an LLM's output is up to random chance. This is how LLMs imitate human language: each stage of constructing the text has built-in randomness, just like how human language has variation and flexibility.

This is my problem with using these things in the workplace. Like, imagine you're using an LLM to fill out a report of an accident that happened, or to write dietary recommendations for a patient, or to give feedback on a paper a student wrote...really anything you can think of.

Even if the LLM-generated text doesn't say anything technically flat-out wrong, the words and details are still randomized instead of being chosen by you for an actual reason.

Using an LLM for these tasks means it doesn't matter to you exactly what you write, what words you use, what details you include, or what meaning it has, just that it looks like you wrote something.

[theabigailthorn]

as someone who has just done a full press junket with a publicist and some quite deliberate crafting of messaging to market myself in a specific way, I'm pretty well placed to say this -

it is CRAZY how many "news outlets' are just AI slop regurgitating stuff that other outlets have done actual reporting on. For every article that an actual journalist spoke to me about and wrote there are two or three slop clones of it, and even more shortform video summaries. I took a quick look at TikTok and it's WILD to see the lines that me and my team crafted being vomited up by AI voices. I mean, it demonstrates pretty clearly that publicity works cause it's saying a lot of the things I want it to say (plus a few false things it's made up) but wow, the degrading impact this tech is having on the public information sphere and the hard work of entertainment journalists is PALPABLE

[violet-prism-creatively]

I finally read ND Stevenson's new book Scarlet Morning (I had to wait for the copy at my library) and why isn't there a huge tumblr fandom for it??!

Fun pirate story that veers into cosmic horror! Amazing eerie worldbuilding! Hot older pirate lady who's not what she seems! Illustrations! Lore that we need to be discussing the mysteries of! Tension between siblings and found family!

Also the color version of this illustration is beautiful! Look at this! (found on ND's tumblr)

And the prose

Can I post a page from the beginning of the cosmic horror section here? This one reads more like a Night Vale segment but they become genuinely scary.

Fun middle-grade pirate adventure -> oh this worldbuilding isn't just quirky it's really cool -> Holy cod there's Horror in here! -> btw there's also still humor -> fascinating lore -> Who was Scarlet Morning??!!

Go read Scarlet Morning and talk to me about it!!

[degrommunism]

I really do not think the average person understands how different the training resources and access are for a cis man playing sports vs everyone else. I wrote an article last month about how until 2020 they were given the Swedish women’s national hockey team expired protein bars for tournaments and only five practices leading up to it. More often than not people who aren’t cis able bodied men playing a sport do not have equipment properly fitted to them. Women’s teams do just straight up get less court or field or ice time. Coaches and trainers will refuse to train you on certain things because they just assume you cannot do something.

Idk. We have seen the athletic accomplishments of cis men come very far in the past century as they got more specialized training and the sports industry as a whole grew. Yet People still really think physical advancements and progression can only be done by cis men, and the the upper limit of what’s been recorded by everyone else is this permanent, unmovable thing. For a long time people thought it was impossible for a woman to do a triple axel until it happened.

[spiralingintocontrol]

taken.

A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of

I appreciate this

[headspace-hotel]

It's kind of interesting, but written in a tone that is meant to inspire paranoia.

It's not scary that the website knows most of these things, because it needs to know them in order to connect me to the page and show it correctly.