Word slut

Musician, writer, artist, gardener, Jane-of-all-trades. I keep astonishingly busy with a wide variety of things. Recently into visible mending. Still fixated on Mass Effect. Wrote A Star to Steer Her By, writing Sunset and Evening Star (Yes, still going, just slow!).

[sabrebash]

Is That Allowed

[sabrebash]

Boy am i glad that the con has a facebook page so i can post this photo:

[shadesofmauve]

A trad music session I'm in played an hour long set at the county fair once. There were maybe 15 of us, but most of them were 'heads down' players, focused on their own instrument and not what was going on around them, so no one but me saw the woman with a kangaroo in a sling in the front row.

When we got done I was all "Oh my god, did you see the KANGAROO?" And all these people whom I actually know (not random internet strangers) tried to convince me I had to be wrong and I'd "just seen a dog." Friends, it's BIG BABY KANGAROO LEGS were sticking out the back of the sling. They joked that I was delusional.

Jokes on them. We were all waiting for the shuttle bus back to parking, and who should join us at the bus stop? KANGAROO SLING LADY.

Suck it, haters. Surprise kangaroos happen in real life!

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[shadesofmauve]

Wild serendipity! I saw this a bit over a werk ago. I was completely unaware of any Mexican harp tradition, and was tickled to have my assumptions revealed and broken, and to hear a very different type of harp music.

The NEXT DAY I went up to fiddle camp and saw Los Originarios del Plan play, and the next werk i took a bunch of workshops from them, learning the fiddle parts of Arpa Grande tunes!

[shadesofmauve]

I just got back from Fiddle Tunes. Hard to believe i was last there seven years go, and first there decades ago. Rather rewarding to recognize how far I've come in ability to pick tunes up on the fly. Even when tuning AEAC# for the first time.

AND — huge news! — I was able to sketch concerts! In pen!! Like I could before the horrible thumb injury (albeit a bit looser).

See?

Head full of tunes, heart full of happy.

Got home Sunday, leaving Thursday for the Oregon Country Fair. Told my sweety we had three nights to practice swords before i went away for more aggressive peace and nonviolence.

[persbaderse]

before my egg cracked, i had noticed that trans people were often pro-accessibility and up-to-date on the needs of disabled people, but i hadn’t seen any inherent connection between the two (other than the obvious minority-looking-out-for-other-minority thing). but now that i’m trans and medically transitioning, and i have to constantly repeat myself while talking to doctors and nurses, and explain things about my own anatomy to medical staff who should already know this, and having every single problem i might have blamed on my “condition” so nothing i say is taken seriously, all of the sudden i have a little sneak peak into the life of someone who has to deal with this all the time. like shit bro, being disabled probably sucks ass, someone should do something about this

[persbaderse]

happy disability pride month, we all deserve autonomy and respect and access to medication

[wizardarchetypes]

oh hell yes an open askbox. builds a nest in it

Aw man I can't remove that bc of the migratory blogger treaty act of 1918. very well.

[shadesofmauve]

Fiddle camp, day 2:

Went to an antique store in downtown Port Townsend and found my next instrument! I'm gonna be SUCH a hit at the morning workshops!

[pagerunner-j]

Headline: "Why Emerald Downs is struggling to get horses to fill out racecards"

Me: "Because they are HORSES and DO NOT HAVE THUMBS."

(and yes, I know what they mean, but the mental image of a horse being asked to fill out its own statistics for the paperwork is still sending me.)

[grimbuswimbus]

sleepy lil bab wakes up, meows a bit, and then goes back to sleeb

[tinierpurplefishes]

telling you about their dreams

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[depsidase]

[tuttle-did-it]

People need to be told this more often. Especially the wankers who keep supporting the billionaires. They're not going to give it to you.

[vanglaggle]

"why are so many leftists disabled" maybe it's because disabled people don't really care for the "kill all disabled people" parties but who can say

[weepingwitch]

i do wish the response to the ai water usage concern debate (umm actually the water and mineral usage is roughly equivalent to all of our other constantly growing massive distributed information systems that require enormous amounts of resource extraction etc etc etc) was less of a "haha checkmate luddites" and more of a "hmm maybe we should reevaluate our usage of constantly growing massive distributed information systems that require enormous amounts of resource extraction" but idk

[pankendev]

there are places in the world today that are experiencing 40°C for the first time in recorded history. of course there's no way to know whether chucking billionaires into volcanos will appease the sun god but i feel we're doing the scientific method a disservice if we don't at least try

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I shared a post from another side about AI here and I just saw someone arguing that we shouldn't use AI to detect cancer cells because "AI will literally destroy humanity". And I'm like. I'm as happy as anyone that so many data centre projects have been cancelled and can't wait for people to stop wrecking everything I use by shoving unnecessary AI into it, but I do not think that you are correct, sir. If we could maybe focus on the real problems instead of falling for the AI investor hype (who want everyone to believe their product is world-destroying dangerous, because that gets more investment for some reason) then maybe we can have more useful conversations.

AI will kill a lot of mostly poor people through normal boring means like resource deprivation (most notably water and electricity), stupid mistakes (vehicle accidents, medication accidents, etc.), and being turned into military technology. It is not part of a Vast Conspiracy to Permanently Destroy Human Critical Thinking, turning us into Mindless Zombies, and then being used to Kill Us All. It's not exciting enough for that. And the solutions aren't exciting culture wars, either; they're long, boring campaigns of politics and legislation, all very monotonous work.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

"AI diminishes critical thinking and makes people less likely to think for themselves" yes, your skills and habits depend on what you use. People who watch a lot of tv are less good at reading than people who spend that same time reading books. People who carry phones with games and music on them everywhere are both less patient and more nervous when isolated and unable to communicate with anyone, than people who live without phones. People who grew up googling stuff are less adept at tracking down information in printed books and newspapers (without digital searching) than people who lived pre-search engine. People who lean on near-ubiquitous AI for stuff can become weirdly dependent on AI for things that they'd be better off deciding for themselves, and people who use AI to obtain information are a preselected group who were already more inclined to trust AI than they should have been.

"AI is giving us all permanent brain damage in part of a long con by the elite to destroy free will itself!" No. No it isn't. If the chatbots go offline, your aunt will remember how to write her own grocery lists again. Your cousin will be able to return to writing his own emails. I promise. AI is obnoxious and annoying, and it is dangerous in the same sorts of boring ways that many power-hungry technologies are dangerous. It's not going to destroy humanity.

[madeofklay]

What I learned not to do in art school

[v0rpalsword]

my bag is raising a lot of questions already answered by my bag.

image shows a canvas tote bag reading: this bag contains: cheese, wine, definitely not the disembodied head of our oppressor. the first two items have green check marks next to them and the third has a red x. there is red splattered along the bottom of the back, particularly concentrated in one corner.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

every time an American says "Legos" my ears spin around and fall off

[dragon-in-a-fez]

for the confused Americans in the replies:

[dragon-in-a-fez]

growing up in Canada (and as far as I know this is also generally how it's used in Europe) we treated "lego" as a collective like "rice" or "water". every time I hear someone say they're "playing with legos" it sounds like "eating a bowl of rices".

[galahadenough]

While lego as a plural sounds incredibly wrong (not saying it is, just feels wrong) your post has now given me the contrary urge to call rice “rices”

[dragon-in-a-fez]

you are the only person who gets to disagree with me on this post

[postapocalypticparenting]

No no, rice is the plural. And in the rare case that there’s only a single grain? That’s a rye.

[shadesofmauve]

Excuse me. It's a rouse.