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charlesoberonn

Mammu! Finius and Ferbingetorix built Rome in a day!

charlesoberonn

asphor

I feel like this also implies that rome is somehow being destroyed by the end of the day

charlesoberonn

The Emperor Constantine loves Finius and Ferbingetorix's "New Rome" so much that he makes it his new capital and names it after himself.

asphor

Yeah that checks out.

What's the doofenschmirtz contraption/scheme of the day?

charlesoberonn

Doofenric the Ostrogoth (insert jokes about his daughter Vanessa being "Goth" but in the modern sense) invented a City-Mover-Inator to move Rome across the Danube so his Germanic confederation could sack it.

Thankfully, Agent Pericles stops him by redirecting the Inator to Finius and Ferbingetorix's New Rome instead, moving it to the Bosphorus.

charlesoberonn

While Pericles and Doofenric are fighting over the controls of the Inator, it gets accidentally changed to paint remover mode and then fired at a random direction.

Somewhere nearby a painter just finished coloring the statue of the emperor when suddenly all the paint gets removed.

Painter: Aw...

Painter, giving it a second look: Hmmm... 🤔

charlesoberonn

Candysseia: What animal even is Pericles?

Finius: We named it "platypus", meaning flat-foot.

Ferbingetorix: On account of his feet being flat.

Candysseia: And where did he come from?

Febingetorix: We have no earthly idea.

charlesoberonn

Doofenric the Goth: Pericles the- wait, what animal even are you, Agent Pericles?

Pericles: *hands him papyrus*

Doofenric: *reading* A "platypus", meaning flat-foot... oh, on account of your feet being flat!

charlesoberonn

To be clear, the Emperor Constantine looks like Roger Doofenshmirtz.

Also, I agree with everybody who says that Greco-Roman Candace's name should be Candassandra (since nobody believes her warnings).

wayslidecool

the grinch is fucked up right. he was created specifically as a critique of the commercialization of christmas, but now all his edge has been sanded off. now he's a generic mascot for "hates christmas," which is great to have because the commercialization of christmas has become so overbearing that that's a demographic you can market to! and now he's just part of the Christmas Fold. he's santa's edgier joker counterpart. he has become the very thing he sought to destroy. back in november i checked out a customer with a $1100 order and most of it was grinch merchandise

shorthistorian

sirlanceolaf

I think it's important to remember that the Grinch's critique of the Over-commercialization of Christmas in the original story came from a place of deeply rooted cynicism and loneliness on his part. He was so jaded and blindsighted by said loneliness and cynicism that he was incapable of imagining that the Who's loved Christmas for any reason OTHER than the stuff that came with it.

It was the Live Action Version that Really Highlighted these elements and made them the focus, considering it's portrayal of the Who's and their despair at losing their Christmas Stuff. They end up proving him right.

In the Original Story, he's proven WRONG. The Who's still celebrate Christmas with no less joy or enthusiasm as before. And he has a change of heart because he realizes:

"Oh, shit. I was wrong about these people. They're actually good folk that don't just value the stuff that comes with Christmas. And here I was, excited to see them suffer. I feel awful."

Now, does this change any of how commercialized Christmas has become nowadays? Not particularly.

But I think it's important to not become a Grinch and let the cynicism of it consume you. There's always more to it, even if it's getting harder and harder to see these days.

clingyduoapologist

The lesson of avatar was never “killing bad people makes you just as bad as them” it was “you cannot be letting fascists dictate what counts as a win or loss” guys like come on it’s been 20 years

clingyduoapologist

Katara doesn’t forgive Yon Rha and hug him and dry him off and walk him home she leaves him scared and sniveling and crying in the mud but she leaves him alive because she realized in that moment that she was only doing this because she felt like she had to. She hates this man, therefore she should want to kill him, right? The narrative isn’t saying wow Katara killing a mass murdering fascist dickwad is just as bad as said dickwad killing an innocent wife and mother during a raid on her home, it’s saying wow isn’t it fucked up that this little girl has been forced to carry this deep seated anger in her for most of her life to the point where the only outlet she believes she has for it is killing a man in cold blood? And like… yeah! That is pretty fucked!

thesuperheroesnetwork

Texts From Superheroes

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swagophile

You're mommy's little noob aren't you? You love being level one. You love using starting equipment for mommy don't you? It's okay. You don't need any XP, just let mommy handle any combat encounters for you. You'll be mommy's special little noob forever~

sirlanceolaf

I'm sorry but also I'm not because it fits so well. Literally the plot of the anime/manga.

#DYLYMAHTHMTG #Do you love your mom and her two-hit multi-target attacks?

weaselle

aliens versus earth animals master post collection

This is as many of these as I could find, special thank you to

@octaviathevictoriandragon

giraffepoliceforce

I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.

They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.

Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.“

Hippopotamus.”

Keep reading

swordofthornss

My partner is so autistic that I tried eye contact as a punishment once during sex and they had to safe word

sirlanceolaf

academicssay

kactusnz

yeah where's the robot that picks up cat poop and wipes the floor with disinfectant? Where's the robot that loads and empties the dishwasher? where's the robot that puts away the clean washing?

derinthescarletpescatarian

Roomba's about as good as we can do with current tech

alagaisia

Tags made me rethink this whole situation. We DO have a robot who does the dishes for us. She’s called a dishwasher. Wow.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#couldn't you just upload photos of your utensils and tell your robot that only these exact objects go in the dishwasher#???

They're robots not Lieutenant Data.

shitposting-hobbits-to-gallifrey

Relevant XKCD:

XKCD 1425 Tasks

findingfeather

Oh god it's such a good example of the way that it's hard to understand why algorithmic shit we do have (what we so misleadingly call "AI") is honestly nothing, is literally just sticking words together in word orders, vs what would actually represent real cognition, which is the ability to load a dishwasher.

Because for organic systems - humans, other animals even - the ability to communicate in language is a super high level thing. In order to get there, with our meat brains, you have to have already gone through all the levels of cognition below, like "recognize birds" and "perform simple tasks but in multiple uncontrolled settings, reacting to changes of circumstances" and so on. In order to talk, as a human, by whatever method you talk (words, text, sign-languages, whatever) you have to do all those cognitions first, and also have probably done a solid sideline into theory of mind.

And so we assume that because "AI" can generate language, can put together sentences in order that we associate with complexity, according to common patterns, that it must be "intelligent" (or at least surely on the way to becoming so), that this ability to move words around into syntactic patterns represents the same thing for the computer as it does for us.

It just doesn't. The computer program is not working on the same physical sequence and rules as the animal (and thus human) brain. The chat program doesn't have to actually build an entire sequence of sapience and meaning and shit, built in turn on massive amounts of subconscious reactions to circumstances and so on, before it becomes possible for the computer program to move words around into ways that are deceptive to humans (because we only just keep feeding it words).

This becomes painfully obvious when you try to get these programs to actually do things. To actually react to anything outside the carefully controlled environments of the IT lab. It's why "AI" can appear to talk about existential issues, but can't actually power a robot that you can rely on to load your dishwasher.

Or identify a bird in a picture.

krisrisk

Not to shit on a good post, but we have robots building cars. On their own. Germany has factories where the humans only overlook the robots.

It is NOT a question of possibility. It's a questiob of making it affordable.

And I still think it could be done. It would need to have a robotic arm and the shelves within reach. The dishwasher already has a computer, it would only need upgrading with the arms software.

The thing is

It would not make your life easier.

The robot would need maintenance. It would need repair. It would need electricity. All of these are expensive even for dishwashers.

So instead of upgrading the dishwasher, jusz upgrade your life surrounding the dishwasher.

For example: there's lndustrial dishwashers which take about three minutes for a program. You have one tray where you put things on. If you add cabinets which hold trays instead of china, you can take a tray out the washer and store it in the cabinet.

Erasing about 50% of the work by adjusting to the machine. Done.

findingfeather

The thing is that those factories are created - and this is important - to make the robots able to make the cars.

The entire place is hyper-designed to make absolutely sure that nothing upsets, confuses or disrupts the programmed patterns of movement and action that the robots then use to make the car, and no new element of confusion is added to the whole process. The humans overseeing things are there for essentially that purpose: so that the process is maintained, the environment controlled, and if something does go askew the whole thing is stopped and that thing is fixed before it causes a breakdown all the way through the chain.

The human overseers are kept for that purpose . . . .because that's something human cognition can do!

So like yes: you could design your entire life around allowing a mechanism to cause dishes to be done. But that's not really what people mean when they say "I want a robot to do my dishes."

They want a robot to go around their home as it exists - their home full of the messy chaos of a human living in it, leaving dishes on desks and bedsides and tables, with a cat and the cat's box and that pile of unfolded clothing - and washes their own dishes, that they already have, without breaking them or the machine or causing property damage. And without washing anything they have out on surfaces that are available to the robot that looks like a dish, but is actually a decoration. And also without leaving behind things that turn out to be dishes (or dish related mess) but are not recognized as dishes. Presumably most people want this without super-invasive "smart" tagging on everything they own (designed to tell the robot what is and isn't a dish that should be washed).

So like yes: you can set up an environment that allows an automated process, even a very complicated automated process, when you've optimized that environment, and then leave that process to run with only minimal human supervision (which still amounts to "someone sitting in the oversight booth more or less all day" and still involves a loooot of fiddling, and code-fixing, and repair to the system, and redirecting of the system).

That's not the same as what people actually mean when they say "I want a robot to do my dishes", and thus does not speak to why the latter is still not something we're even close to achieving.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#so they can ‘learn’ to paint and write but loading a dishwasher is impossible

Yes that's correct. The physical dexterity it takes to manipulate a variety of unknown 3D objects of highly variable weight and friction, from a constantly changing environment full of other objects they're not supposed to touch, and getting them all into the right area without breaking them or anything else, is a phenomenally complicated task. Much, much more difficult on every level than Spicy Autocomplete. A writing algorithm doesn't even need to be able to move! It's got no arms!

These sorts of tasks have nothing at all in common with writing or drawing algorithms. These are more like roombas or self-driving cars; or I should say, step one, being able to safely move around the house, is like roombas or self-driving cars. We can just about do that part (roombas work fine 99% of the time), but the part where they recognise dishes and know how to safely pick them up and stack them into a dishwasher? Last I saw, the absolute pinnacle of that tech was "the robot can successfully open doors" and "the robot who has been programmed to pick up beer cans (object of completely uniform shape, weight and density) can pick up a beer can" and "the robot can stand back up if it falls over".

zwoelffarben

It's a bit further along than that in some spaces, but only just a bit. Last I checked, we're talking robot programed to pick up beer cans (object of completely uniform shape, but not uniform fullness (weight, density, center of gravity) can pick up beer cans.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Ah so they can pick up opened beer cans now. That will end well.

zwoelffarben

I said they could pick them up. I didn't say they wouldn't spill the contents all over the carefully controlled test environment's floor and themselves.

nonasuch

This is also why robots can’t make clothing, by the way. Fabric has way too many variables: stretch and weight and texture, the direction of the grain, fiber content, how much it frays, on and on and on. Every item of clothing on earth is still made by a human being using their hands to put fabric through a sewing machine, because a task done by “unskilled” people being paid starvation wages in a sweatshop is orders of magnitude too complex for any robot.

sessa23

It's almost time for Zack and Cody's reservation at the Italian restaurant

The internet on 16/11/2023:

papayajuan2019

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

ourplague

chilewithcarnage

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

wizardnuke

"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan

transchakotay

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

- Simone Weil

lunarlagomorph

I think ive said it before but you really gotta feel bad for oedipus that wanting to fuck your mother got named after him. He really did not want to do that . It is central to oedipus rex how badly he didnt want to do that. Dick move by freud

teaboot

It is wild what kind of shit people will report to you in a security uniform. "Hey, that guy in the wheelchair? He doesn't need it, he was walking outside earlier" like ??? Okay?? First off you don't know his medical status, second what the fuck am I supposed to do with that information? Take it away from him?? It's still his fucking wheelchair, he brought it from home

teaboot

like I don't have any physical disabilities that I'm aware of so stop me if I'm not in my lane but I feel like even if a dude is fully able-bodied, if he owns a mobility aid and he wants to use it then unless he's swinging it around wracking toddlers with it then it's really none of my damn business

Also?? "Hey there's a junkie in the bathroom" ??? First off I saw them go in and I know for a fact that person has cerebral palsy, and also, are they actively using drugs?? Are they in medical distress?? No?? Then let them piss oh my God would you rather they shit on the street

teaboot

and actually, another thing, because fuck it, but did you know?? "Security" means "safety"?? If nobody is using drugs inside the building and nobody is hurt or being hurt or bothering anyone or fucking in the lobby ar yodeling into the intercom or fucking, I don't know, supergluing the toilet seats up and running off with the furniture, then what precisely are you expecting me to do about it? I'm not not the goddamn Social Norm Enforcer. If you're wearing clothes and leaving people alone and you aren't stroking out or freebasing coke with your non-service animal then I honestly do not give a fuck. "There's a man in a dress in the women's room" Okay and are they watching you poop? "I don't think that's a real service dog" is it humping someone? "That girl smells like weed can you get her out of here" Weed's been legal for like five years get with the goddamn program. She probably works here. Do what you came here for and go hoooooome

direhuman

me explaining to the other trainers that apricorns are unknown outside of Johto because of deliberate suppression by the Silph and Devon corporations to present artificial pokeballs as the only means of capturing pokemon and establish regional monopolies after they eliminate renewable sources

theinsidiousdice

(via @itsbenedict)

itsbenedict

eternalfarnham replied to your post

you’re in the pocket of Big Ball, I see

there’s no pocket for me to BE in, there’s no LOBBYING involved, there’s no SUPPRESSION campaign because you don’t need one! traditional methods suppress themselves when you make modern pokéballs available. you might as well start accusing AT&T of deliberately suppressing the noble traditional art form of the goddamn semaphore.

not to mention OP demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the market realities of the pokéball industry- Silph and Devon are not monopolies, if they weren’t in constant competition their magic monster domination spheres wouldn’t cost two bucks a pop. the ball spec is a public standard, and Bill Masaki’s storage system based on that standard is an open-source project. they’re only the two largest players because they’re able to leverage economies of scale. you still get smaller operations like the Laverre City Poké Ball Factory, with better regional supply chains and local brand recognition, making room for themselves in the market.

sm FUCKING h at y’all granola-crunching conspiracy theorists. you probably also believe Super Potions cause autism.

justisdevan

Ok, but it is a shame that artisanal balls are basically off the market now. Like, you have to ride the monorail and hike through a half dozen routes just to find someone willing to sell you a Fast Ball. Believe me, when your boss at the power plant needs five Electrodes by Tuesday you are not going to want to make the trip to Alola; you’re going to head on down to the Mart and get some Ultra Balls, which will do the trick but aren’t well tailored to the job.

I’m with you that modern catching techniques are better, not to mention more humane, but there genuinely is a loss from more niche balls becoming harder to find. Maybe someday the long slowpoketail of consumer demand will be met, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that Shellder.

cetaceanhandiwork

look y’all are missing the point. mass production of silph balls crowding out traditional apricorn craftsmanship is, if anything, more a side effect of the real problem: that capture artifacts are too easy to get your hands on these days. $2 basic balls are a problem. before modern ball tech you had to go to an artisan, yes, but part of their job was to care about who had the power to recruit pokémon from the wild, as a backstop against another Knight of Veilstone coming along. there was a time when you’d never lay a hand on a ball yourself until it was clear you respected pokémon, whether tame or in the wild. but now, a “pokémon journey” is open to practically every teenager, even if they’ve got not interest in treating their team with trust and love.

the worldwide rise in the last century of organized crime and apocalyptic cults who use pokémon as their muscle is a direct result of capture artifacts becoming a mass produced market commodity rather than a mechanism for preserving the sacred trust between humans and the wilderness. it’s a miracle that the powder keg hasn’t already gone off by now.

eternalfarnham

Oh that is rank historical revisionism - what, do you think artisans’ definitions of “respect” were constructed in a vacuum? We already had rhetoric as far back as the warring states period in Ransei about how only the soldierly classes, overwhelmingly descendants of nobility and taught from birth, had the intangible qualities necessary to “bond” with Pokémon. And when we start seeing apricorn balls develop in Johto, which borders Kanto - Kanto, where we know there’s been extensive cultural cross-contamination with Auroran and Dragnoran expeditions - surprise, suddenly only a small population has the intangible qualities necessary to use them, too.

That notion was, and remains, a tool to limit general access to Pokémon in the interest of maintaining class disparities. I mean, have we already forgotten the Aether Foundation’s pseudo-conservationist nonsense? Their attempt to manipulate natural resources and establish a power base in Alola, while they were modernizing and taking their place on the world stage, was founded on this exact rhetoric of “rescuing” Pokémon from local disenfranchised populations, as if taking Pokémon away from places like Po Town would improve things instead of increasing competition between trainers and decreasing safety.

Do you want more disillusioned kids joining gangs? Because that’s how you get Teams!

sindri42

Artisanal balls and anyone who supports them are tools of the aristocracy to suppress the common folk. In the days when a ball could only be made by hand by an expert, only the wealthiest could afford pokemon, and as a result anyone not born into the “elites” was forced to be subservient to their “betters” for protection.

The release of the $2 pokeball meant that the balance of power shifted to the common citizens. If any child can wield the power of a god, the military and the government and the wealthiest businessmen have no power over them.

More than that, instead of power being determined by the wealth to acquire pokemon, power comes exclusively from the dedication, effort, and empathy required to train them to high levels and to maintain their loyalty. If a person simply buys their pokemon, then those pokemon will either stay at low levels forever, or refuse to obey the human because there is no respect between them; the most powerful people in the world are those who caught a critter at level 2-5 and then devoted their life to raising it into a world power.

And as a beautiful side benefit of this, standard of living has increased across the board. Since every household has at least one minor pokemon in the family and there are increasing numbers of professional, working pokemon joining cities and other civilized areas and working to improve them, every aspect of economy and industry has been enhanced by their supernatural capabilities. Electricity is generated cleanly and in abundance for everybody. Pollution is cleaned up almost completely and instantly. The production of farms, mines, and workshops is multiplied, even as safety standards improve. Yes, every few years another potential apocalypse comes about and needs to be prevented by a couple of brave teenagers, but outside of those incidents the world is damn close to utopia.

6qubed

…that was all fascinating to read and I would like to see more like it, please

for instance; what the hell is in lemonade that makes it a more powerful healing alternative to regular potions

suinicide

Opium

lemondorp

See, unlike in the real world, the Pokémon world has yet to ban cocaine in drinks.

antique-scarecrow

this website is INCREDIBLE

atopfourthwall

Y'all are missing the REAL fucking problem with the Silph and Devon monopolies - conformity and standardization. Oh, sure, in the last few years they’ve gotten better with pokeball variety and specialization that create balls with different appearances, but it’s been a prevailing problem for YEARS that pokeballs are locked into their color and appearance. I’ve got a Swalot that has wanted for YEARS to be in a proper ball that matched its gelatinous form - a proper purple pokeball. And the only purple pokeball that exists? That frickin’ MASTER BALL that these companies have been promising FOREVER yet never comes to market. Frickin’ thing might as well be called the Half-Life 3 Ball since I don’t think it’s EVER going to be released. And even if by some miracle it DOES come out, you KNOW it’s going to be prohibitively expensive because no company is going to put out a ball that’s supposedly ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT DOES NOT FAIL CAPTURE and put it at the same price as a great ball - would crowd out the rest of their entire market because why WOULDN’T people want a ball that never fails? And even after all that, I STILL don’t want that thing for my Swalot because it’s got a great big “M” on it, as if my Swalot’s nickname is “Mike” or something (It’s Nurple, as it happens - Swalot picked it out itself, don’t ask me it just clearly wanted it). Whatever the hell they make pokeballs out of, the stuff CAN’T BE PAINTED. Believe me, I’ve tried - oils, acrylics, enamels, you name it - the stuff does not stay on it no matter how much primer you lay down (consequently the primer does not stay on, either). I want to CUSTOMIZE my pokeballs’ appearances, which even artisan balls are a bit limited by, but you at least have more options for appearances. “Oh, but what about stickers and capsules?!” Yeah, again - the products BY those companies to squeeze even more money out… and they STILL don’t offer me everything I want! Honestly I’m pretty sure those things just add fireworks and sparkles for when your Pokemon exits the ball - not changing the appearance so much. Hell, it took them years to upgrade those things so that you can put your balls through the PC with them still on - anyone with the original generation of capulses? You’re out of luck - need the new ones! I just want pokeball customization. How hard is that?! No, have to keep them conforming to the same designs for years and years and years! It’s bullcrap.