The sharpest scalpel makes the cleanest cuts.

A fandom room of one’s own, as it were. Fat, femme, she/her, white, adopted. My asks are probably open. I may have written that thing you hate.

[runraerun]

how it feels watching Star Trek for the first time.

[mothermara]

remember to bury the dead with a phone, everyone. these days the ferry terminal at the river styx wants you to download a fucking app

[thelawfulchaotic]

Gemini had the fucking GALL to get in my email and summarize a 3-line email, taking up more space than the email did visually.

Hit the “thumbs down.” It’s like, what’s wrong??? Was our summary wrong? Were there offensive words? Thank you for helping us improve our AI tools :)

I selected “other.”

Text box popped up. Please elaborate!

Wrote in “I can fucking read” submit comment

Then had to spend several minutes torching all my settings with a flamethrower. Let me be clear: I’m (a lawyer) notoriously picky with my words FOR GOOD REASON (lawyering) so I overwhelmingly reject Gmail’s “helpful” little assistance. My privacy settings were set to “full paranoia” a little less than a year ago when I saw the writing on the wall and knew public defenders could become a target in the future. Better to lock it all down now.

Gemini had crept in there and turned ALL that shit back on. And showed itself by saying “Jane Doe says she’s so sorry for your loss and offers to reschedule for Thursday at 3” over an email from Jane Doe saying “I’m so sorry for your loss. We could reschedule for Thursday at 3?”

Why would I possibly need this. In what universe would I need this. I have eyes and a brain and a reading speed that twenty years ago was measured at 1500 wpm with full comprehension on dense scientific text. Furthermore! If I read a summary, I’m not reading what they actually wrote. If I’m not reading what they actually wrote, I’m not using my own judgment on the words and phrases that they used.

I literally don’t understand why this is helpful at all. This is just avoidance. Using LLMs to write is specifically Not Writing. Using LLMs to summarize is Not Reading. Using them to make art is Avoiding Making Art. Just READ! Just WRITE! I was not put on this fucking planet to not read and not write and not make art! Avoidance is an anxiety symptom and indulging it gives it more power.

If I had an AI to do my most dreaded task, answer the phone for clients, I wouldn’t use it. Because an AI cannot help them. An AI cannot hear the facts of their case, make appropriate noises, be thoughtful and insightful, and then give them a realistic estimate of what could happen in court. I am unique. I cannot be replaced by machine learning. I have style. I have expertise. I don’t hallucinate unless I’m having a really great Friday night and I’m off the clock.

When I need to outsource tasks from my own brain, I give them to people I know can do them and that I trust to do them right.

Fuck, it just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?? Goddamn Gemini jumpscare right in my own fucking email

[theanishimori]

I WAS NOT PUT ON THIS FUCKING PLANET TO NOT READ AND NOT WRITE AND NOT MAKE ART!

[wormsdyke]

i know the standard practice in original fiction is sparing use of italics but i just can’t stand by that i really can’t it’s too good of a way to give emphasis. this word or phrase is so important i’m gonna squarsh it

[swordsman-jing-ke]

“My emperor is fine” your emperor has commissioned over 8000 life-sized terracotta soldiers and buried them facing east, in the direction of his recently conquered enemies in the hopes that they will protect him in the afterlife.

[qin-shi-huang-di]

DELETE THIS IMMEDIATELY

[qin-shi-huang-di]

IM NOT PARANOID YOU’RE PARANOID

[qin-shi-huang-di]

would a “paranoid despot with innocent blood on his hands”construct a bunch of secret underground passageways under his palace to avoid the prying eyes of the living and dead? if anything, it just proves how INTELLIGENT and RATIONAL i am because no one can be sure of where i am at any given time! being in a constant state of heightened vigilance is the best way to avoid the assassins who are 100% real and 100% out to get me!

[despazito]

girls night

[dragkingandreweldritch]

so I read the article and the story is both less and more insane than it sounds.

basically, there's been an ants' nest near a vent shaft of this abandoned Soviet bunker for decades. the nest spilled over into the bunker itself at some point once it was abandoned and there was no way for the ants to make their way back up to the nest, no queen but a constant supply of new colony members raining down from above, and no source of food in the bunker other than the corpses of their fellow ants.

fast forward to some scientists looking for bats that stumble on what's basically a post-apocalyptic ant society. they go "holy fuck" start studying, and observe that, all things considered, the ants still pretty much act like regular ants doing regular ant things.

fast forward some more, and the scientists feel like they have enough data from observing the colony as-is, so they decide to try an experiment. they put a little walkway between the bunker colony and the og colony in the vent shaft so the bunker colony members have the option of leaving and rejoining the og colony.

spoiler alert: every single ant in the bunker immediately nopes the fuck back to the colony in the vent shaft. within days the bunker is completely empty. the scientists leave the walkway in place so when more ants inevitably fall back down the vent shaft they can just climb back up instead of starting up the cycle anew.

tl;dr it's not "oh noes evil ants are on a rampage", it's "ants forced into a horrible situation to survive get to go home"

[anarchistmemedistro]

everyone in the crab bucket just wants to go home

[mostlysignssomeportents]

20 years ago, it was a scandal that Google started to track which links you clicked on the search-results page,

[sabertoothwalrus]

this is like finding a journal written by someone before the zombie apocalypse happened

[eszlelesihezag]

[anarchistmemedistro]

[paradoxial-cunt]

[ghostrepeater]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Let’s go everybody it’s time to survive

[punchholesinthesky]

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

[dunkstein]

I will be 70 years old and I still will never have gotten over the time the Mythbusters used a rocket powered steel wall to - and I use this word as literally as possible - vaporize an entire car into red mist

[dunkstein]

https://youtu.be/Nl8xTqTUGCY

If you haven’t seen this episode of Mythbusters I feel so bad for you because “What car?” remains to this day as a defining moment of my adolescence and my entire life

[theotheristhedoctor]

That was a near-religious experience 

[outburstsoftheordinary]

I made a gif of it for those of you who cant watch the video in your country. Or if you know you just want to stare at it mesmerized like me

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Oh wow they sure did vaporise that car into red mist

[thirdwizard-who]

@identifying-cars-in-posts?

[identifying-cars-in-posts]

1994-1996 Ford Aspire

[polyphonetic]

(formerly)

[adamtheredbeard]

I’m partial to the “Can a Snowplow Split a Car in Two” one. The answer was “No”, so they naturally ramped it up. Which led to this

A rocket powered, sharpened steel wedge slicing a car (with its engine!) in two, right down the middle

[the-most-adorkable-smile]

@identifying-cars-in-posts what’s this one?

[identifying-cars-in-posts]

1988-1989 Honda Civic

[professionalchaoticdumbass]

(formerly)

[warmfigure]

i am massively overdue for a very very good week where not a single bad thing happens and everything is easy

[unlettered-heathen]

reblog to give prev a very good week where not a single bad thing happens and everything is easy

[pigeoncomics]

[sentientsky]

it's gonna be okay (/threat)

[stegal]

Ha a lélek vándorlásában hiszünk, el kell fogadnunk hogy ha zenészek voltunk, zenészek maradunk akkor is, ha négy lábbal újraszületünk..

[silvormoon]

Translation, via Google Translate:

If we believe in the migration of the soul, we have to accept that if we were musicians, we will remain musicians even if we are reborn with four legs.

[thepioden]

Wolfgang Malamozart over here like damn

[magicratfingers]

if you really loved me you’d play this at our wedding

[catchymemes]

[disgruntled-foreign-patriarch]

it’s almost as if Tolkien knew what he was talking about

[thepieking]

It’s almost as if Tolkien personally witnessed one of the bloodiest wars in human history and then used that to fuel his writing.

[famouspainterwombat]

[riflebrass]

Always amazing to see old contraptions that were not only cleverly designed but beautifully made as well.

[inbabylontheywept]

People are so much more sad, and desparate, and lonely than you think. I have had three incidents in the last four months were a technician I was working with was being either dangerously unfocused (we work with high voltage), or just flat out angry with their coworkers, and every time when I just pulled them aside to say hey, this isn't you, you're nice, and you're competent, so something must be up - what can I do to help - they have responded by bursting into tears. One guy was struggling to get his wife moved into a care home, one guy just got served divorce papers, and the other hadn't slept a wink the night before because his daughter had the pukes.

I haven't spent my whole life responding to people being rude, or stupid, or dangerous with knee jerk compassion. It's a new habit. The first time I did that as the lead for my lab, it was because the guy genuinely was so good natured that I knew something had to be off. But the other two times were just me going, alright, lets see if it always goes this well, and so far, it has. I'm almost 30, and I just figured out that the #1 reason people are shitty are because they are going through shit.

I don't think you have, like, a moral obligation to respond to people being jerks with knee jerk compassion. But it has made my life so much easier the last four months that I would recommend trying. For your own sake. Please.

(I'll step off my soapbox now. Enjoy your Sunday.)