Tell a Braver Story

I like and follow from @thewatercolours. The stories are true: “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” - St Irenaeus

[sailorotter]

Pilot writes 'I'm bored' in sky during flight from Liverpool

The pilot's mischievous flight path was noticed by plane spotters on the flightradar24 tracking app

If that doesn't scream "Douglas Richardson"...

[raptorific]

[poprocksromance]

A cautionary tale about the growing literacy crisis

[siena-sevenwits]

Begone, foul dwimmerlaik. Skedaddle.

[wardengrill]

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1990)

[amanitaphalloides]

I worry a little bit that people who refuse to learn about ai as a part of their anti ai position are going to be extremely unprepared to understand what’s actually scary about it and already have their digital literacy at risk tbh

[amanitaphalloides]

not that I am some genius in this regard but if you follow ai developments even slightly you might change the things you are most worried about. do people know the extent to which ai is already eating itself and how meaningless this is making swaths of the internet. do people know that there are plenty of random mid-sized companies today buying their employees’ likenesses to create digital clones and using these to make hundreds of videos. I am so much more worried about labor and surveillance and abuse than people becoming lazy about writing emails. and idk man I sort of like and respect people who are willfully ignorant about it as a way of minimizing its force in their lives and I am in some ways jealous but also when I see posts that basically still boil down to “chatgpt will never fool me” I am like 😭😭😭 for one thing not the only thing to be concerned about, for another thing I am really sorry but I don’t think you’re right

[wakor]

Exactly. I think about this a lot when I see "ChatGPT is always confidently wrong" arguments, not because genAI is often right, but because the argument doesn't work on people who actually use it regularly.

It isn't always wrong. It's often correct enough for the average person's day to day usage. If you say, "it always gives misinformation", they're going to ignore you because just that morning it gave a perfectly functional summary of their meeting's notes. It correctly identified some vegan restaurants in their area. It accurately calculated some math for them.

If it was always wrong, no one would use it. The danger is that you can never tell when it's going to be wrong, and when it's right enough that people start to trust it and not double check anything (automation bias), the things it gets wrong become catastrophic. Sometimes automation bias is so bad that mistakes compound and proliferate for ages before anyone catches it (ie: the company who were making financial decisions based off of hallucinated forecasting).

[bliss-bliss-bliss-bliss]

See, my particular bugaboo about AI is the overwhelming mountain of evidence that it LITERALLY CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE:

MIT Study Finds Artificial Intelligence Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

Cognitive Atrophy Paradox of AI–Human Interaction: From Cognitive Growth and Atrophy to Balance

The Silent Erosion: Global Generational Cognitive Decline in the Age of AI and the Future of Human Intellectual Agency

How AI is rewiring the human brain: the generational transformation of cognition and knowing

AI-overdependence and human cognitive decline: Hazards, evidence, and mitigation strategies

Is AI dulling our minds? — Harvard Gazette

Your Brain on AI: Cognitive Offloading, Debt, and Atrophy

Is Generative AI Rewiring Our Brains? Here's How It Happens

I think this is an easier argument to make with the people in your life who use AI. "It's wrong enough of the time that you shouldn't trust it" is easy to refute with "but it's right just enough of the time to be worth it". Add to that the good old Dunning-Kruger effect, and it's easy to give AI way too much credit. And way too much power.

Instead of asking them to vet AI's accuracy (especially about things they don't understand themselves), ask them about what effect AI has had on their own brain. Have they noticed changes in their memory, their attention span, their ability to focus?

Ask them what they use AI for. Ask them how they did those things before they had AI - and now ask them if they could do that now.

Ask them to consider what it would be like if they didn't use AI for a month, or a week, or even a day.

If the thought makes them uncomfortable, beg them to consider why.

I work in memory care, so believe me, I know what the process of dementia often looks like, and I'm seeing the telltale signs in more and more people who are younger and younger than ever. The scariest part is that the average diagnosis usually comes several years after the first symptoms present. It worries me.

And, as others in this thread have mentioned, there are even signs of cognitive decline in the AI itself as llm models inevitably begin to eat their own tails:

Almost all leading AI chatbots show signs of cognitive decline

Older AI models show signs of cognitive decline, study shows

Digital Dementia? AI Shows Surprising Signs of Cognitive Decline

Oh, so we're all getting less and less functional. Cool. Cool.

[beginnerblueglass]

The Gospel of Thomas has become a topic of interest for me, not by choice really. Here's my thought of the day: By the second century, Christianity was made up of such a huge percentage of women that Celcus described Christianity as a religion for the "foolish, dishonourable and stupid, only slaves, women, and children." Women followed Jesus' teachings in droves. He and His church were very attractive to them. Women in the first and second centuries were not stupid, believe it or not.

The Christian Gospels tell of the life of a Man who said of Mary, who sat at His feet (shorthand for a posture of learning as a disciple), among the male disciples that the portion she had chosen would not be taken away from her, even though it went against the grain of her day's gender roles. He honoured Mary for honouring Him by anointing His feet. He healed men and women alike without discrimination. He healed a disabled woman on the Sabbath, drawing the ire of the Pharisees. He accepted the worship of a woman of ill repute, forgave her and treated her with respect, as a person, not as an object. He accepted the material provisions of women, and was accompanied by them in His travels. He called the woman who dared touch Him while she was bleeding "daughter," and was not angry or offended, as she was expecting Him to be. He revealed that He was the Messiah to a woman who was living in sin and rejected by society, asked her to give Him a drink of water from her jar. He never used "women" as a general pejorative in His parables or teachings; there may be foolish women who forget to light their lamps, but there are just as many foolish men who disobey their master, and there are also wise women who find the coin they were looking for. If a man is tempted to lust at the sight of a woman, he should gouge his eyes out rather than blame her. The widow who gave two coins to God touched Jesus' heart more than all the wealthy men giving their fortunes. The women were the first to see His empty tomb, the first to see Him risen, the first to share the message of His resurrection. The Holy Spirit was poured out on all flesh, men and women.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “Look, I will draw her in so as to make her male, so that she too may become a living male spirit, similar to you. But I say to you, every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I can tell you which Jesus I think would attract legions of female followers.

[pearlescentiris]

This is exactly what I mean when I tell my friends that theology is a science and, on a more humorous note, why the Theologian to Unhinged Linguist Pipeline is a very real thing (just ask Tolkien). I'm just studying for a bachelor's at the moment, not even pursuing a doctorate (yet, it's very tempting right now but the priority is getting a job once I'm done with this last semester), and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that theology isn't just a study that requires knowing your Bible (even if, trust me, you very much do), it requires studying a lot of history, linguistics, Hebrew culture from both broader and long-lasting traditions to anecdotes that are no longer being practiced, and deep textual analysis. The other thing I've learned is that heresies and heretical-linked apocrypha are freaking hydras and they make me want to jump out a window, even moreso when people treat these heretical-linked apocrypha as some "dirty little secret" that the Church buried when. No. It was disregarded because people who study Scripture all the time read over the text and said "yeah no this is baloney that was concocted as heretical propaganda during a time where we're still trying to figure out our Creed and heretics are trying to put their foot in the door". For people reading this who aren't as savvy on this, basically The Gospel of Thomas and other gnostic (or arian or others) texts are to us as, say, "lemmings are suicidal and mosquitoes have no ecological significance so we should have them go extinct" are to the zoological community. Zero basis in reality to anyone who knows anything about the actual subject matter and sounds downright ridiculous but gets parroted all the time anyway.

[siena-sevenwits]

“This is why the Enemy wants you to think you have no song to write, no story to tell, no painting to paint. He wants to quiet you. So sing. Let the Word by which the Creator made you fill your imagination, guide your pen, lead you from note to note until a melody is strung together like a glimmering constellation in the clear sky. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor, too, by making worlds and works of beauty that blanket the earth like flowers. Let your homesickness keep you always from spiritual slumber. Remember that it is in the fellowship of saints, of friends and family, that your gift will grow best, and will find its best expression. And until the Kingdom comes in its fullness, bend your will to the joyful, tearful telling of its coming. Write about that. Write about that, and never stop.” ― Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

[nevermindtheblizzard]

ARTISTS AND WRITERS WANTED for HAZARDOUS JOURNEY on JOINT CREATIVE VENTURE

Never Mind the Blizzard is an upcoming zine dedicated to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, and we now invite all artists and writers interested in this colourful period of polar history to submit work to us!

So, grab your sledging pencil or polar paint kit—we’re looking for:

Anything under the umbrella of visual arts, including paintings, illustrations, comics, collage, diagrams, printmaking, and more.

Creative writing: short pieces of fiction, vignettes, creative nonfiction, poetry, etc.

Any combination of these.

In other words: if it (1) relates to an Antarctic expedition taking place between 1897 and 1922 and (2) can be put to (digital) paper, send it our way! Playfulness and formal experimentation is encouraged, and everyone is invited to contribute regardless of skill level. Please see the submission guidelines on our website for a few more details.

Submit your finished work HERE by August 15th (23:59 GMT).

[siena-sevenwits]

So I think I need a new general Antarctic Exploration tag. We're going with a partial Cherry quote: #go out and explore

I just reblogged a bunch of that stuff below, so that tag may be handy if you'd like to find or skip that kind of thing.

[peatbogpirate]

Polar comic of the day: Quick to bounce back

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

happy fun times in the antarctic 👍

from michael palin's erebus

[birds-inmymouth]

Yall know that post about how nothing makes eating feel safe quite like descriptions of food in high fantasy books? Consider Antarctic travel logs

(Book is Hoosh by Jason C. Anthony! I really recommend it!)

[fullyunsourced]

The 1933 Second Byrd Expedition drama

When Richard Byrd returned to Antarctica to establish the base Little America II in 1934, he brought fifty-six people, including pilots, biologists, meteorologists, radio operators, a physician, and... a postal clerk?

You see, the postal clerk was how the whole thing would be paid for, and it's all thanks to Franklin Roosevelt being a stamp collector.

The Great Depression had just kicked off, and nobody wanted to pay for another Antarctic Expedition. Private and corporation donations came in, but Roosevelt suggested an untapped market: Stamp collectors. A fee would be assessed and you can get your mail right from Antarctica. He even scribbled a rough sketch for a custom stamp.

And so among its scientific pursuits, the Little America II base would include a post office with the express purpose of receiving collectors' mail, cancelling it (marking the stamp used), and sending it back. The custom stamp had a 3 cent face value, and you needed to add another fifty cents of postage, which is nearly eight dollars today.

Okay, so the guy in charge of the mail wasn't really a full-time postal clerk. He was just a crewmember who was deputized for the job by the postmaster, who wouldn't go himself.

The expedition got underway and a dedicated tent was set up as the post office with an initial batch of 56,000 postal covers to go through. But he really wasn't taking Antarctica well and it started to show in the commemorative covers he was stamping. He'd get the date wrong and wasn't getting them stamped fast enough! The mail piled up in the tent so badly that some of it got buried in the snow.

This would not do, because stamp collectors are absolutely insane and wouldn't accept souvenir covers with anything wrong.

The original clerk was replaced, and a new postal clerk was found. This time, they went with an expert: Charles Anderson, who'd been working the mail for 43 years and whose specialty was cancelling letters by the thousand at special events. He brought with him a custom workshop with everything needed to fix the situation.

Anderson spent sixteen days straight working through the colossal mound of mail, only getting sixteen hours of sleep. But it paid off: The covers were finally sorted, and the mailbags could go on the ship to return to the United States. In all, Little America II saw over 150,000 pieces of mail.

The second Byrd expedition was a scientific feat in mapping the coastline, discovering fossils, and undertaking geological research.

One final note is that you can still get an Antarctica-marked cover today! For the cost of a domestic first-class stamp and a self-addressed envelope, your mail will go all the way to the Scott-Amundsen Station and back to you. Just two per year though, because nobody wants to go through the 1934 mess again.

[confessions-of-an-old-cassette]

me: so yeah, there’s year round settlements across the continent from dozens of countries now that do scientific work, one of them is named after you actually—

robert falcon scott, visibly shaking: what did you mean by world war ‘one’

[saints-who-never-existed]

The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition

On my recent trip to beautiful, blustery Dundee, I made a new entry in My Big List of Polar Expeditions to Become More Than a Little Obsessed With in the form of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE) 1902-04.

I knew the bare-bones details of its existence already - that it set sail from Scotland, for example, contemporary to and largely overshadowed by the Discovery Expedition. And that it yielded this iconic image of a Piper and a Penguin:

But the more I looked at the artefacts on display, the more my interest was piqued and I'm finding already that there's so much more to this Expedition than I could have imagined!

Lead by William Speirs Bruce and sailing from Troon, the SNAE has been described as "by far the most cost-effective and carefully planned scientific expedition of the Heroic Age."

They brought back around 1,100 natural specimens, 212 of which were previously unknown to science. They discovered new land to the east of the Weddell Sea. And they set up the first manned meteorological station in Antarctica that's still in use today.

But by far the most interesting aspect of the SNAE to me so far is pettiness and prejudice that lies at the heart of why it's so often forgotten.

Speirs Bruce, already a Polar veteran, actually applied to join the Discovery Expedition but received a decidedly lukewarm reception from the Royal Geographical Society and then-president Sir Clements Markham. Indifference then turned to outright enmity when, after hearing little from them for over a year, Speirs Bruce proposed his own expedition to work alongside the Discovery.

Markham himself dismissed the SNAE as "mischievous rivalry," and they were largely ignored and denigrated on their return. No member of the SNAE received an RGS Polar Medal like those of the Discovery, despite being just as deserving, and it's been proposed that nationalism and prejudice were at least in part to blame -

"Some of the aversion of the London geographical establishment may have arisen from Bruce's overt Scottish nationalism... he said: "While Science was the talisman of the Expedition, Scotland was emblazoned on its flag; and it may be that, in endeavouring to serve humanity by adding another link to the golden chain of science, we have also shown that the nationality of Scotland is a power that must be reckoned with."

As happens so often, it seems to have been a case of not just wanting to make new discoveries and consolidate knowledge and power, but wanting the "right" sort of people to do so to the exclusion of all "others".

[o-lei-o-lai-o-lord]

Hmm. Not sure how I feel about

[siena-sevenwits]

With your hands, generally speaking. At least, I feel about with my hands.

[lost-without-my-boswell]

There’s something wrong with him