white. genderfae woman. autistic. queer as fuck and proud. 34. feminist. she/her or they/them pronouns. trans and ace inclusionist.
icon by eaglidots on toyhou.se
In WWI, a tradition in German regiments was to photograph the tallest and shortest member of the regiment side by side. These photos were then often sold as postcards.
I love how in most of these the tall person looks happy or neutral and the short person looks like they're considering the consequences of killing the camera man
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
Sometimes, what you need to do is literally ask for a refill. I know that can be scary and upsetting and requires you to be willing to be vulnerable, but please consider two things:
One: if what you want to do is be able to fill other people's cups, you can't fill from an empty cup. You literally can't do the work if you're emptied out. You need to do this so you can help.
Two: for the people that love you, the people that really matter, you aren't imposing on them by asking for a refill. This is one of the things I really internalized from coming home to Judaism: when someone asks me to help them, they're giving me the opportunity to perform a mitzvah. No matter your belief system or outlook, I think we can probably all agree that being given an opportunity to be more awesome is pretty great.
So ask. Here are a few scripts you can try.
"Hey, I am...
... having a bad day.
... really struggling.
... really hurting because of the state of the world.
... having a hard time focusing on positive things.
... feeling emptied out.
Could you please help me? I could really use...
... some company.
... to hear about something beautiful you saw today.
... to hear some good news.
... to see a picture of your pet.
... to be told something you like about me.
... to be reminded of something I do that you like.
... your silliest new meme.
... to go for a walk with you.
... to hear about your favorite show.
... a hug."
I have genuinely never asked my friends to love me a little bit louder and gotten anything but an outpouring of support.
People love you and want to take care of you. All you have to do is give them an opportunity and maybe tell them the best way to love you right now.
If anyone is ever training you to replace them in a position and tells you 'its an easy job I don't do much' what this means is that you are about to spend six months to a year catching up on all the stuff they didn't do and sorting out the stuff they did poorly.
In related news I finally managed to finish un fucking my predecessor's lack of a filing system.
My job is literally in safety and emergency management and that phrase makes me break out in hives. Which is to say that you are entirely one million percent correct.
There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.
There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!
unfortunately very true. Doing Better does not always mean never being upset or never being triggered or never having trouble. often Doing Better means experiencing those things and being able to keep going/cope healthily/move on. if you’re in a bubble with no sensation, if you’re numbing yourself out, that’s not what recovering really is. it won’t help you have a happier life it’ll just make your world smaller and smaller until you can’t fit anywhere anymore. gotta learn to make peace with the hard stuff too, that’s the only way to keep going
The oldest living tree ever found was a pine named “Prometheus.” It had been alive since before the Egyptian pyramids were built. Some guy cut it down in 1964. Source
he was actually a forestry graduate student who was doing research on bristlecone pines (Pinus langaevea) and got his increment borer stuck in the tree. this tool costs almost $800, so he asked the forest service if he could cut down the tree to recover the tool. after cutting it down, it became apparent that the tree was actually the oldest living organism. ever. (around 8,000 years old). so, not just some asshole. the guy feels extremely guilty and has even broken down in tears during an interview about the accident
So after the grad student cut down the tree and discovered it was the oldest tree in the world he quit studying forestry and went to study salt flats (can’t cut down the oldest trees in the world on salt flats no siree none of that happening) and he was being interviewed about his research, but in the middle of the interview the reporter just stops and says “wait aren’t the guy that…”
And he just takes off running. Literally. Turns around and runs across the salt flats away from the interview and I feel so bad for him but I can’t help but start crying I’m laughing so hard about it
imagine a guy high tailing it across salt flats away from a dude with a recorder
its so different to know it was an accident and that NO ONE was aware until after. its not like this was one ignorant guy cutting down a fucking relic.
this feels like making one of those posts people get sent death threat anons about but...
do you think the Despicable Me minions are people?
Me and my friend are in two camps. She thinks they are not, simply because they are not human. Her requirement to be a person is simply to be a human. ME on the otherhand, i extend my definition of personhood to any sapient non-human who can communicate on par with a human. Humans are people by default, but i think a 40 foot flesh creature with teeth for skin would also be a person if they gave me their name and told me they were DTF.
Thats why i would not consider a dog a person, because while they yes are very intelligent and have an internal state and way of communicating with us, they are not able to do so on the same level, whereas a minion would be, despite not speaking the same language.
This all was brought on btw bc of an argument with her fiancee about putting minions in the people section of his Tomodachi Life Island
Oh my definition is even broader than that: An Orca Whale is a person, but one that needs additional civil protections because of its inability to communicate with the kind of nuance necessary to function in modern human society.
And by the same logic, the Minions have the same right to inhabit the "people" section of Tomatachi Life as any other fictional character, "human" or otherwise.
(more under the cut)
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One thing to consider here is how we're using the word "person". I'm using it to describe an individual organism with enough intelligence to possess a sense of self, communicate with others of its kind or even other species, and engage in social practices like teaching skills to a younger generation or making art. You're using it to describe an organism that could perform all the necessary tasks to be a citizen of modern society, and neither of us are wrong, at least colloquially. Someone who is better at linguistics than me can come in here with the specific technical language surrounding sapience and personhood.
The reason I cut my definition so broadly is that like you, I agree that all humans are people by default, but there are many humans who have even greater communication barriers with humanity at large than the minions do. For instance:
-People with cognitive and physical disabilities that greatly impair communication
- Children, who will be able to participate soon but not right now
- People who are so socially isolated they can't function outside of their very narrow social circle (so they need some help adapting to society at large)
- People that don't have any problems communicating, but whom some assholes will argue are not people for the sake of maintaining the social status quo (we're all familiar with the -isms here)
These are also all people who are THE MOST VULNERABLE in society and I try to center my personal policies on "what could we be doing that would be good/safe/just/helpful for EVERYONE?"
By putting the "oh for sure a person" line out at "Orca" (and being willing to entertain arguments that extend that line even further) I'm keeping my mind open about how radically different a person could be from me and still be a person, and thinking about what can be done to ensure justice for this person. That's more self-maintainence than anything else, but you see where I'm coming from.
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I think your concept of "a person is someone who could participate in civil society" is a very good one too, and goes hand in hand with mine, because it raises the questions of "Is it really feasible for this person to participate in civil society? If not, what can we do to include them? And if meaningfully including them is not possible at this time (Orcas) how do we do right by them?"
I think that in the future, it's entirely possible that advances in physical and social technology will enable us to communicate effectively with Orcas, and that the Orcas of today and the future are more than intelligent enough to understand the concepts of Encroachment, Liability and Lawyers, and will sue the shit out of everyone for what we've done to the oceans.
Personally, I'm looking forward to that day.
Since we don't have that technology yet, but can recognize Orcas as people, it's on us to sue the shit out of data centers and the state of Washington (among others) on their behalf and put the money towards giving them the chance to reach that future.
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Referring to small text on the original post though: are Minions "people" in the sense that they can and should be included in the "people" section of someone's Tomadachi life game?
Admittedly, I am more familiar with whale biology than the Tomadachi and Minions franchises, but from what snippets I recall: in-universe, Minions meet both my standard of basic sentience AND yours of being able to participate in civil society and thus putting them in the "people" section of Miitopia would be appropriate.
However, in our universe, Minions are entirely fictional, so they're philosophical constructs and not alive, so they're not people at all.
...but everyone in Tomadachi life is fictional, so the Minions are as much people as any other character and thus the Minions have the same rights as "people" and to participate in Tomadachi Life Island as "human" characters do.
let's take ibuprofin. together. @queenofthefae - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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