Blog of Scironex @scironex - Tumblr Blog

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segamascott

tgirl-thucydides

oysters-aint-for-me

thecottageinthedark

petermorwood

You have to listen to the basic melody a while before you start to improvise.

prokopetz

There's a thing in Classics studies where you'll read surviving descriptions of Ancient Greek automata which attribute all manner of feats of near-lifelike behaviour to them – then you look at the reconstructed plans for the automaton in question, and it's a device with roughly the sophistication of a wind-up mouse.

The broad consensus seems to be that the authors of such descriptions are exaggerating for clout. For my part, I look at all the people in the year 2026 who've managed to genuinely convince themselves that LLMs are not only sapient, but smarter than they are, and I think: hmm.

03josten

stop fucking using the word psychotic to describe bad behaviour and violence already god fucking damn it

03josten

oh my god i'm so tired psychotic does not mean violent it does not mean angry or erratic. it refers to a person suffering from psychosis, a loss of touch with reality that includes hallucinations and/or delusions. psychotic people are not inherently violent and y'all need to understand how much stigma you create when you again and again incorrectly use the word psychotic without even thinking about it

03josten

would appreciate if non-psychotic people could reblog this

thediscossessed

Everyone say thank you black women

noireservoir

THANK YOU BLACK WOMEN

creatingblackcharacters

LOUDER!!

beanswithbones

sometiktoksarevalid

what-even-is-thiss

How did I ever end up being seen as an interesting person by some people when my favorite cereal is Raisin Bran

what-even-is-thiss

Okay my favorite cereal with milk is raisin brain. Most cereal I don’t think tastes good with milk but I will eat fruit loops out of the box like potato chips if given the chance

what-even-is-thiss

When the only available option for breakfast is cereal like on a trip or something and there’s no Raisin Bran I usually end up eating the milk and cereal separately

clementine-kesh

call me terminally academia-brained but i do think a lot of the fun of character analysis is figuring out how to build a compelling argument for a particular reading using lines of evidence from canon as well as meta/intertextual support

clementine-kesh

and you could say that what i’m saying here is basically “a lot of the fun of doing character analysis is doing character analysis” but let’s be real a lot of fandom character analysis is pretty heavily vibes-based. and i think that’s where i really chafe up against the traditional thought-terminating fandom attitude of like, everyone’s opinions hold equal weight and any interrogation of that is inherently hostile. because i think it’s fascinating to dig into where others are coming from in terms of their views on characters or dynamics or whatever, especially when they differ significantly from more commonly expressed views, and part of that digging is asking people okay what parts of canon are you drawing from to support your opinion? what parts of canon are you disregarding or downplaying? how does this argument hold up in the light of how race, gender, class, ability, etc. operate both in the piece’s in-fiction and real world contexts?

rlyehtaxidermist

one of the best academic paper titles

rlyehtaxidermist

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

derinthescarletpescatarian

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

imightbeobsessedwithsocks

I still don’t understand

derinthescarletpescatarian

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

prokopetz

I'm not dogmatic about realism in porn, but it is refreshing to encounter an artist who understands what a huge dick under clothing would actually look like. Sometimes it feels like body paint masquerading as trousers and physically impossible hammerspace underwear are the only options, so it's fun when you encounter the tiny intersection of "into massive hogs" and "actually knows how fabric works".

teathattast

thestorieswesay

god it's all so true

homunculus-argument

I think cities should have coin-operated nests you can open for a small fee and then stay in for a pre-set length of time. Little discreet capsule hotel type places you can crawl inside to do whatever you please while the outside shows that it's occupied and can only be opened from the inside. Just scattered around in whatever odd locations happened to have an empty space big enough to install one. Make the locations odd but typical enough that people learn what kind of places to start looking for one even in cities they've never been in, just the same as how squirrels don't remember where they hide all their stuff, they just look for stored food from the kind of places where a squirrel would hide it. Like you gotta get a place to sleep, so you start looking for a random round door in a wall.

homunculus-argument

"But people will just use those to do drugs and jerk off" yeah but people who would do that are gonna do that anyway, do you want to watch them do it on the subway? Like some kind of a pervert?

"Homeless people would use them" yeah sure and people sit on park benches. And they also shit in bathrooms. People should have public access to places where they can sit, shit, and sleep. Ideally these three should also be three separate places. If I see you taking a shit on a park bench I'm beating your ass.

what-even-is-thiss

There’s places in Japan that are sort of like this. Like Internet cafes with rentable booths type thing.

These places are sort of why Japan appears to not have a homelessness problem. It’s illegal to sleep on the street so people end up living out of these Internet cafe type places.

Nice thing to have. Slightly dystopian in practice but it’s not the internet capsules fault.

the-big-mood

I didn’t realize there were so many people getting destroyed by mattresses 😂

theswordofdamntheseknees

I love these so much.

Actual good first-time college student advice:

Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna

Backpacks with thick straps are your friend! Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back

You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class. Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.

If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE! It’ll only get worse from there!

If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.

You are in charge of your schedule. Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.

Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.

Pay attention to your credit hours and grades. Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!

Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook. Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online. Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts). Use your best judgement on what you think you need.

Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them. It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.

The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates. They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study. And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.

You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!

If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted. Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!

Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!! Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed. Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time. Look into it if you need to!

Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something. Anything.

Eat and stay hydrated. Bring a water bottle and snack to class.

All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.

It’s going to be hard and there will be times you might think about giving up. This WILL happen. You just have to make sure what you’re doing isn’t making you absolutely miserable and/or there is something rewarding and positive to look forward to at the end!

saintmosshart

I did none of this and it bit me in the ass every time so this is EXCELLENT ADVICE.

ADDITIONAL ADVICE

Don’t let a mental health day turn into a mental health week because you will be so screwed.

Pay attention to the syllabus and do not lose it. A lot of professors put all of the assignment due dates in there and ONLY in there.

If your school has blackboard or moodle etc. CHECK IT. a lot of professors will only post certain info there and not talk about it in class

Check your student email account weekly. A lot of it will be unimportant junk but sometimes it’s the only way professors will communicate.

beauty-and-learning-blog

Check your student email multiple times DAILY.

fightostudy

THANK YOU. I’m so glad i have resources like this queued up in my ‘college’ tag bc honestly i was so stressed before

studyingallnight

Advice from someone who really fucked up their freshman year:

READINGS ARE NOT OPTIONAL.

I REPEAT. READINGS. ARE. NOT. OPTIONAL.

Put them in your schedule, read BEFORE class. And summarise it. For bonus points, come up with some questions about the text and go introduce yourself to your professor either after class or during office hours, and ask them about it. This will make them much more likely to remember you in a positive light (and possibly bump your grade up if you hit a hard patch.)

Your library will have a copy of your textbook. If you cannot afford to rent it, you can go to the library and borrow it from the front desk for a few hours whenever you need it. It is there for you, okay?

SO DO YOUR READINGS.

novelty--night

When planning out your schedule, make sure you have a plan A and a plan B. Classes fill up fast so it’s better to have a back up plan.

ladynorbert

Reblogging this because when I went to college back in the mid-90s, I could have used all this advice. I was the first person in my family to go to university, no one told me any of this, and the internet was not really A Thing yet. (For perspective, there were an entire two computers on campus which had access to the World Wide Web, because it was such a new concept that demand for it was low.) This would have been relevant then and it’s relevant now.

ganymede-dewormer

bookfinder.com is really great for finding cheap secondhand textbooks if anyone needs it also. I’ve found books on there that were basically new but significantly cheaper