Random but Cool

Idk man

[shamebats]

My child, who spends their entire life being transfered from home to car to school and back, and is not allowed to leave the house or talk to anyone and can only in their wildest dreams imagine a life free from constant surveillance, is very sad. Obviously they're dumb and lazy, like all kids these days.

[whineandcheese24]

kind of a tangent but i recently went to a bowling alley with my friend i'm 19 he's 18 and the woman at the door didn't want to let us in because there was a sign saying under-18s needed adult supervision. everything got cleared up and we were able to go bowl, but i'm still so mad about the fact that kids need adult supervision to go to a bowling alley and arcade. like okay maybe young kids should have supervision but what do you mean middle and high schoolers need to hold mommy's hand while they play video games. kids aren't just addicted to their phones because phones are addicting, we're addicted to our phones because there's nothing else to fucking do

[shamebats]

I'm sure banning kids from online spaces while simultaneously not ensuring that they have access to offline spaces to socialize in (without having to rely on their parents who already don't have time for them) will help them feel better & less alienated from society.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

As I said, one-and-three-quarter years ago:

If you're going to take away kids' smartphones, then give them back the streets.

[fiollaigean]

I deleted the photo for phone storage but I was at a public square kind of space in Cleveland, there were restaurants all around and a little open air market and food trucks and a local band playing. Some flower beds. Benches. a nice spot to sit, hang out, enjoy the outdoors and get some yummy food. And there was a sign saying anyone under 18 there after 4 pm. had to be accompanied by an adult. There was a posted minimum age the adult had to be. There was a posted minor-to-adult ratio. what's more, the sign explicitly made the exception for underage employees of nearby establishments, provided they were there during scheduled work hours (they'll take your labor, but won't suffer you to enjoy the fruits of it)

When I was "under 18" I had a job and friends from different parts of town and options for transportation. I volunteered at a food bank. I had an income and the desire to spend it. and I would have been told to leave if I had the audacity to go hang out in a community space without a grown up.

My parents made the point that teens often cause a Ruckus which can be unpleasant to be around. which is true but 1) adults are just as capable of being a public nuisance and 2) if they can enforce this rule, surely they can enforce rules such as "no swearing" or "no loud music" or "no roughhousing" or whatever else they're afraid will happen if a teenager goes out in public.

It's sad.

[saintfelina]

[hexenmond]

Image description: a tweet by divinelydaria.

saw an inspiring video that said you need to have 4 hobbies.

create, consume, cavort, commune

create: bring something to life consume: appreciate the art of another cavort: move your body daily commune: have a community to socialize with

end image description.

[lierdumoa]

I think you need hobbies that do all four things but the number of hobbies needed to cover all these needs may vary. Some hobbies pull double/triple duty. Some hobbies can cause repetitive stress injuries so it's good to have a few different ones that fulfill the same need so you can rotate to get the fulfillment without the carpal tunnel.

[fellshish]

reading other comments on the fic you’ve just commented on is like. asynchronous book club meeting 🫶

[jacobwren]

"But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn't mean it's going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there's some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I've got cancer. Thankfully, it's very treatable, but I've got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible. If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors." If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong. "And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis." This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes. This is another key to understanding – and thus deflating – the AI bubble. The AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job. This is key because it helps us build the kinds of coalitions that will be successful in the fight against the AI bubble." - Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI

[shadow-manor]

The rest of the thread is here.

tl;dr: Don’t monetize AO3, kids.  You won’t like what happens next.

[ratherembarrassing]

read this thread. this is by far the most concise explanation of a lot of different issues that i’ve seen in fandom spaces in a while. cosigning both the linked thread and the thread about aus/uk/can law that’s linked in-thread.

[billybluboy]

AHDHXHEBSG TWITTER WRITERS DID WHAT NOW???? AND PEOPLE PAID THEM????

[prof-grace-aspen]

If someone has never taken a class that includes copyright law, they may not know this stuff, so I don’t necessarily blame random people for not knowing what copyright is, but like… maybe just maybe it’s something that should be taught????

[antifa-stray]

[mercurywells]

Just another reminder, because this always drives me crazy, but even if monetizing your fic was 100% unambiguously legal and protected, AO3 would still not let you do it because AO3 was founded and is supported by people like me who want a fandom community that is completely divested from making money off of fic.

[naryrising]

Yes, this. Lots of fanworks on AO3 are unambiguously legal. Fics based on Shakespeare plays and fairy tales and Greek mythology and The Great Gatsby and your original character from your D&D game are not violations of copyright, because no copyright applies to those things.

AO3 still doesn’t let you monetize those things on the site, because we don’t want the site to be commercial! Because that’s not what it’s for!

It’s not there for you (generic you) to make money off the efforts of the people who build and maintain the site for free! We aren’t getting paid for the work we do to give you a nice site to use, just like you aren’t getting paid for the work you do to create whatever art you share there. Because fandom is supposed to be a community where we share with each other, and therefore we all benefit.

The deal is, we give you a free, stable, safe platform to host your works. In exchange, you get a site that isn’t covered in ads and tip jars and links to gofundme and “read the next chapter at my patreon”. You get one goddamn place on the internet that isn’t trying to make money off you. And we will defend that space and keep it non-commercial.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If you want to make money off your fics, you can instead post them somewhere like royal Road. “Oh, but Royal Road’s culture is so much more negative and stressful and lacks the supportive norms of AO3!” Yeah, because people are trying to make money there. Half the userbase is treating it as a storefront and hustling is the natural social consequence of that. AO3’s culture can only exist because it’s not commercial.

[walmart-the-official]

Hey, don’t cry. Free online database of Japanese folk lore

[bleu-guacamole]

Might I add, free database of mostly European folklore and myths

[bogleech]

A Book of Creatures by @a-book-of-creatures doesn't update these days but is another thing along these lines, really huge, fully illustrated all by the author and cites all sources

[marchenshoujo]

Whispering Books has illustrated fairy tales and folklore from around the world! You can even find some Native American ones too. The site's links don't seem to work anymore, so here's an archived version on the Wayback Machine.

[traumasurvivors]

Even if I didn’t have a solid plan, in the back of my head, I always assumed I’d kill myself.

Now I’m an adult and people my age have their lives in order and I’m stuck here, confused, because I never planned to be alive and I’m so far behind.

I feel like I’ll never catch up.

[traumasurvivors]

Hey all.

I want to make an addition to this. I made this post a long time ago.

I’m currently back in university, and I’ve made so much progress with my trauma. I’m in a loving relationship.

Things can and will get better. It’s not too late.

Nothing is perfect by any means. But I’m happy I’m still here and didn’t kill myself. I hope you get to that point, too 💕

[traumasurvivors]

The addition is important! I see the original post circulating a lot, but the addition is important!

[traumasurvivors]

New addition two years later. I’m still going strong!

I’m getting married. I’m still in that loving relationship.

I’ve learned that there’s no real timeline. It’s okay. And while it sucks that I lost time, there’s still so much for me to experience and enjoy.

[traumasurvivors]

Newest addition. 7 years after the original post!

I got married last month! My dog is laying on me snoring. I’ve learned to have healthy friendships and relationships. I’ve learned that I’m not alone and that even when things are hard, I’m going to be okay.

[traumasurvivors]

This showed up in my notes again. And here we are. 2026.

I’ve been married a little over two years. I just got home from friendships that feel like home and family. My husband and I have our own place. I have a full ass book ready to be published.

I don’t know. I’m still in a good place and I can’t believe how far I’ve come from my original post.

[dacuslucy]

so i’ve seen this around a lot and i always felt like the version i listened to just. didn’t have everything? sO! i edited together my three favourite versions of the tik tok sea shanty! enjoy!!

(listen with headphones if possible!)

(yes i know the ending is bad oKaY-)

[prismatic-bell]

You know, I want to see someone explain this in 20 years to music history scholars.

Not because it’s a stupid thing or a dumb thing—I think it’s wonderful and lovely that it exists—but because it’s so RANDOM. “In 2021, this one song specifically gained a following such that people across the globe, who had never met, began to sing it and harmonize together, and other people then stitched their videos together to make entire choruses.” “Okay, but why?” “…..because it was the cool thing to do.” “Okay, but why did it become cool?”

Answer that. ANSWER THAT. Why did it become cool? There is zero reason a 200-year-old sea shanty should be a meme, much less a meme people are taking SERIOUSLY. (Listen to these folks. There’s not a parody in the bunch.)

Like. Just. “We made this giant beautiful thing BECAUSE.” Because why? Because. That’s why. Just because.

I want to see that explained to students and scholars of history who insist there must be a reason for everything. Yes, yes, there was a viral video, but that’s just the catalyst. Why Wellerman? Why not the latest Megan Thee Stallion? Or perhaps more to the point, HOW Wellerman, ALONGSIDE the latest Megan Thee Stallion? What is it that made so many people latch on to this song? WHY?

I do. I want to be a fly on the wall for this. We have, functionally, modern recordings of what this would have genuinely sounded like on a ship, because of this meme. That’s amazing. But what’s the why? And how do you explain “because”?

[madenthusiasms]

Because the most human thing in the world is to find a way to connect and play with each other, and Tic Tok is the biggest, easiest form of that connection in a pandemic. Which is why it’s being taken seriously; the game is no fun if you smash it. People won’t let you connect if they don’t trust you.

Lockdown was the biggest public creativity I’ve had in decades. Not just because I was home, but because the deep driving urge to go “See me. I’m here. I have something to offer. I’m alone but I have skills to share to give, let me give them. See me. I need to be a part.”

Humans are social animals.

[kedreeva]

The other thing is that it’s NOT completely random, it’s not even very random; it’s just that the things that factor into its appearance and creation are spread so widely due to our (new-ish) ability to connect as a community across the entire world that it SEEMS random from up close, AND it couldn’t have been precisely predicting in advance.

Pirates are not a new thing; we have media about them, recently pirates of the caribbean and black sails both being fairly well known pirates media. Ren faires often feature pirate material. There’s been a lot of talk about “pirating” media lately because of the recent uptick in streaming services wanting to all have their own thing. There’s people trying to hitch laws about pirating onto COVID relief bills. There was a recent release of a video game that was popular, I believe it was the Assassin’s Creed one, that featured pirates AND sea shanties, introducing a lot of people to the idea of sea shanties, who could then spread it to others, that was probably one of the major catalysts in a previously simmering pot (the other major one being COVID-19).

And the thing about sea shanties is that they are supposed to be sung as a group, the way most popular music isn’t really made to do. Why not Megan Thee Stallion? Because those songs aren’t created specifically to be sung by a group. You can sing them too, and you can sing them in a group, but they aren’t created specifically with being sung as a group in mind. They’re meant to be sung along to rather than sung together.

Okay, but then why not something like campfire songs?

Because campfire songs are meant to be sung in a group, usually with kids, but not particularly made to bring together a community that is facing a lot of isolation (which is where COVID-19 comes in). I mean, camping is sometimes “isolated” but often they are camping at a grounds where there are other, discrete groups of campers nearby, and even if they are actually alone, most people singing campfire songs are not isolated more than a weekend, or a week or two, and MOST camping is pretty close to a community where people could go, and MOST camping songs are not meant to be sung repeatedly. They’re fun to sing once or twice, but imagine singing them on repeat for 3 months. I don’t know about you but that is not really my idea of a good time.

A group of pirates on a ship, they’re a group, but they’re also a community. They are a job and a family in one. And, IMPORTANTLY, they are isolated for LONG stretches of time together, in a place where the only friendly social contact they have is one another and the only songs they have are the ones they know themselves. And the shanties they sung were meant to bring them together, often for a task (sometimes that task was not murdering each other out of boredom or stress), and to remind themselves that even on days where they can’t see a single other sign of human civilization as far as the eye can see in any direction, they are not alone.

And THAT particular, specific sense of community is HIGHLY appealing to people that have been stuck in one form of stressful isolation or another for MONTHS, almost a year at this point. Think back to the beginning. I can’t be the only one who remembers videos of people singing from their balconies together during the early lockdowns. I can’t be the only one who remembers the story of the night howl. People are desperate to reach out and say “Am I alone?” and just as desperate to answer “No!! I am still here! Are there others??”

So take a bunch of people who have been isolated for a long time (like pirates on the sea), with a good possibility that they’ve recently been exposed to a novel, fun concept (sea shanties) through a game (something more people probably played than usual because of the isolation), which they have potentially shared/spread to friends (because they are GOOD songs), and give them easy access to a single person singing one of these songs (a CATCHY song with easy, rhyming words and a good ONE-two-three-four beat, which humans love) that they are all now aware is meant to be sung as a group (which calls upon their nature as social creatures!!) or see others joining in as a group (because monkey-see-monkey-do is a HUGE human behavior phenomenon), and then give them a way to be included in this group with minimal effort (tiktok), as a way to feel connected to a wider community (those that view their inclusions) and have fun at the same time (which is DESPERATELY needed in a world where things are otherwise majorly crap)…

Well, is it any wonder? Maybe the exact, particular song is a bit random, because it could have been any shanty, but even that’s not particularly surprising either since it’s a shorter one (that fits in with Tiktok’s time limit) with easy lyrics (and a REALLY easy, repeating chorus, so it’s quickly learned) and it has a good, solid beat. Whoever first picked it may have chosen it “randomly” or may have narrowed it down from those type of criteria. You’d have to ask the first person to post.

Maybe people 20 years out wouldn’t be able to piece enough together, but right here right now, it seems like a fairly obvious culmination of events. Maybe not a predictable one, but one that, looking back, makes sense. Something something, Hindsight is 2020 right

[ober-affen-geil]

No this isn’t an excuse to put this on my dash again what are you talking about

I love seeing people be people and I’d like to add the following for consideration. Yes, sea shanties are meant to be sung in a group (sailors still use them btw), yes they’re repetative and easy to pick up, yes the tune is simple, yes TikTok is basically the perfect platform for a thing like this to spread, and yes we’re all starving for human connection right now and this is ideal.

But also the words.

The overall song is about a whaling ship doggedly chasing down a whale, which (taken literally) is not all that relateable. But the chorus? The part that we sing as a group?

Soon may the Wellerman come To bring us sugar and tea and rum One day, when the tonguin’ is done We’ll take our leave and go

This song is about a group of people working together to do something unpleasant, and they don’t know when it’s going to end. The chorus is about the hope that it will soon be over, and the good things that await when it is.

Soon may the Wellerman come To bring us sugar and tea and rum One day, when the tonguin’ is done We’ll take our leave and go

And that is a big mood.

[kedreeva]

Excellent addition, and reminds me to add that a) more than just pirates sang sea shanties, many sailors did (and do!) sing shanties, b) there’s apparently a singing group called The Longest Johns that has been singing shanties and becoming popular (likely because it’s a novel, fun genre of music for the average person that is not a sailor, and because they sing them while streaming a pirate themed game called Sea of Thieves) and this is one of their songs, and c) I just learned of this whole TikTok Shanty thing a few days ago and haven’t had any time to sit down with it, so this was all just off the top of my head. I’m sure anyone looking farther into it would be able to find a LOT more connections and causation or at least correlation that could account for sea shanties (and THIS shanty in particular) becoming a “sudden” thing.

[waywren]

Another fun thing with this? The song doesn’t end. Not really. The last verse goes like this: As far as I’ve heard, the fight’s still on The line’s not cut and the whale’s not gone The Wellerman makes his regular call To encourage the Captain, crew, and all (chorus repeats as long as you feel like) The crew of the whaler are in a potentially never-ending situation. The whale isn’t gone, it’s still pulling the whaler. The ship could potentially be in a never-ending ghost-ship situation, which hooks in REALLY well to the ‘no it’s STILL not over’ feeling we’ve got going right now. Also stan The Longest Johns they’re amazing. They’ve been playing that particular Assassin’s Creed game on their youtube, too!

[prismatic-bell]

You people.

You people specifically are the ones who I want to see explain this. Print this shit out and save it because it is damn good shit.

[athelind]

There’s one more thing that the Wellerman song has that most Never-Ending Ghost Ship tales don’t, and that’s the Wellerman himself. So long as the supply ship from Weller Bros. keeps making his regular call, the crew isn’t entirely  cut off, either from land or from hope. There’s still contact, there’s still that regular touch from the places left behind, there’s still that promise that we’ll see them all again, when we take our leave and go.

[alexseanchai]

okay I am done spamming y'all with reblogs now bc @thedandeliongarden I found it

[ymfingsteadilyon]

There’s yet another aspect, explained in a reblog somewhere down the notes that I’m too lazy to dig up:

The Wellerman is their one contact with the outside world, yes, but “he isn’t some kind of South Sea Santa who goes around handing out presents out of the goodness of his heart”; he’s the representative of the company that holds the whale butchers’ contracts, and pays them in sugar and alcohol instead of (enough) money to buy a ticket out of there.

[ralfmaximus]

Younger folk are getting really good at spotting AI slop, to the consternation of marketing execs.

Found on Mastodon.

[sunderwight]

From what I remember of back when Millennials were outpacing Boomers at internet and tech stuff in general, this is going to cause a lot of issues for companies angling to use slop in marketing because the younger set are always going to be better at spotting it than the older, but the older are going to be the ones approving marketing campaigns and ads and etc. Meaning, the older people will not ever be able to tell what might actually convince the younger.

The good news is that if it persists and Gen Z and Gen Alpha continue to scoff at the generated stuff, then marketing departments aiming at them will just have to give up on using it because they won't be able to figure out how to fool their targets with it.

The bad news is that this won't apply to scams and campaigns aimed at older people, so once again we're going to have a situation where the kids will be the ones lunging across the coffee table to stop Mom from giving her financial info to that really obvious fake scam mom oh my god do NOT buy that it isn't even a real thing.

Anyway godspeed to the younger generations.

[ober-affen-geil]

I do it a lot here anyway, but allow me a moment to get on my archivist soapbox because this is not only cool af but important too.

The US National Archives (and this may certainly apply to other countries but this post is about this specific institution) has a lot of material. And that may seem like an obvious statement, but what I mean to say here is that it has a lot of unprocessed material.

“Processing”, in the archive world, is the word we use to mean “organizing the collection materials in a way that makes sense and describing the collection so people know what’s there”. Essentially, processing a collection or material is what makes it accessible to researchers. Think about how you organize yourself or your space. Most of the time when we acquire material we get it exactly how the creator kept it, which is ranges from neat as a pin to literal garbage dump, but mostly falls into the middle area of somewhat organized but also not really. Processing gives the archivist “intellectual control” (we go through everything so we now know exactly what’s in the collection) and gives researchers something to look at that’s a lot more manageable.

But, like I said, the National Archives has a lot of material. Which at this point includes a massive backlog. So what they have done, with the advent of the internet, is turned to crowdsourcing. (Using a large group of volunteers over the internet to accomplish more than the few people who work for the archive can do, and/or using group knowledge and skills that they don’t have to their advantage. Wikipedia or any fandom wiki is an example of crowdsourcing.) This is a long process, because anything they put up has to be digitized first, and that is not as easy as it sounds. I won’t rant here, but it’s time consuming, labor intensive, and in some cases not even feasible with the material.

Anyway, the National Archives crowdsources through a program that they call “citizen archivists”. It’s something that’s free and obligationless, it’s totally voluntary and you do things like add tags to pictures, transcribe documents that are handwritten or otherwise not word-searchable, and add comments about things that are missing information or context.

The reason I bring this up is because they have divided the work into what they call “missions”, basically just categories of material to work on. They have a new one that’s just been made public (likely because they finally got the digitization completed) that is a large collection of pictures consisting of Native subjects, and they need help tagging them.

So if you feel antsy and need something to do or you feel down and you want something positive, consider helping out the National Archives. Because the work the citizen archivists do makes the materials more accessible to the public, and ultimately to any and all future researchers out there. 

[chiefoftherevolution]

Please do this! Its really helpful, especially for researchers

the Library of Congress has something similar- I’ve been transcribing Spanish legal documents for them

https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/herencia-centuries-of-spanish-legal-documents/

[nerdygaymormon]

A reminder that sell-buy dates or best-used-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.

I love that a food bank is providing this info as they are experts in stretching food budgets and knowledgable in shelf-stable food items

[etakeh]

So I followed the link to the website and found the longer list.

The website puts a link to the USDA site which links to foodsafety dot gov who really wants you to use the app, but you can bypass it.

Also a link to the Canadian government's advisory on best-before dates.

Both sites have links to pages that get more into food storage.

[sashaforthewin]

As it is food drive season I'd like to remind people that while food might be edible past these dates, food banks and food pantries will not use food past those dates, so please don't waste their time by donating things they will not use

[jilli1205]

Trump administration to end Medicare Part D subsidy program in 2027

The prescription drug benefit is used by millions of seniors.

The Trump administration is ending a key health insurance subsidy program that aimed to keep premiums for seniors’ prescription drug plans in check, claiming that it benefits corporate insurance companies, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.

Medicare Part D – the government health insurance program’s prescription drug benefit – is used by tens of millions of older or disabled beneficiaries.

The program’s subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year, the administration announced Tuesday.

That move will likely result in higher prescription costs and increase premiums for about half of recipients, according to an administration official.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo - PHOTO: Mehmet Oz

Eligible seniors can get GLP-1s for $50 a month for weight loss alone

The changes are anticipated to happen in 2027 and enrollees will find out the new monthly cost later this fall, administration officials said.

Currently the government pays billions of dollars to insurance companies as a subsidy to keep prescription drug insurance at an average of $36 per person per month, according to KFF, a health policy nonprofit.

Ending the subsidies may increase premiums for some by as much as $20 a month, according to KFF.

The move comes as Affordable Care Act subsidies have expired and health care costs remain a top issue for voters ahead of the midterm elections. The ACA subsidies helped lower the out-of-pocket costs for monthly premiums for people who purchased health care through the health insurance marketplace.

[ralfmaximus]

The changes are anticipated to happen in 2027

Ah, so after the midterms. Smart.

Unless, of course, this news is circulated widely before the midterms.

[frociaggina97]

"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die

[frociaggina97]

i know a lot of people study just to get paid well but girl this is engineering be for fucking real take this seriously

[ironborealis]

114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.

I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.

Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.

There are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:

1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.

2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.

3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.

The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.

Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.

A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.

We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.

Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:

"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."

The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.

I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.

So if you're going to blindly trust the AI to do critical work tasks, I hope you're prepared to be making an apology tour for the rest of your life if it all goes wrong.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

We've already seen AI give incredibly bad advice in numerous fields, including stuff like trail directions and identifying mushrooms. Pretty sure some AI "therapists" have convinced people to do drugs or kill themselves or other harmful acts.

We've already at the danger point, if not past it.

[doublewindsor]

Cool Canadian history moment 🇨🇦:

We had some absolutely criminal negligence in the building of the Quebec Bridge, with multiple engineering firms ignoring real signs of structural issues.

There is some debate about this, but most engineers in Canada agree this started a new ritual upon graduation with a B. Eng from any Canadian university. You attend a ceremony upon graduation and are given an Iron Ring.

You wear it on the pinky of your dominant hand, so it touches any paper you are asked to sign. Every time you sign off on something in your capacity as an engineer, you are reminded of your duties and obligations.

I have engineers in my family, and it is considered a sacred oath. Much like doctors, Canadian engineers have an ethos to do no harm.

And if you genAI bullshitted your way through your degree, you didn’t earn your ring. How fucking dare you accept one.

[prismatic-bell]

I'm just thinking of this:

This was the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea.

This happened due to a series of incidents that all came back to the same thing: the owner was not an engineer and made his own modifications to change the building from apartments into a mall and maximize floor space, a sentence that here means "removed a shitload of necessary visible support structures and weakened the remaining ones while skimping on or even skipping necessary interior structures."

The building collapsed only five years after completion.

There was a meeting going on during the collapse as to whether the mall should be evacuated, with its owner-slash-"designer" saying no because he didn't want to lose the sales revenue. He and the other executives, of course, left before terminal collapse. If you're wondering how they pulled that off: the warning signs started in April. The building collapsed on 29 June. The terminal collapse began circa 5p KST and became complete at 5:52p. In between those two times, the owner still refused to close the mall.

502 people died.

This is the second-deadliest non-deliberate building collapse in recorded history.

This is what happens when a greedy person who doesn't know engineering design is allowed to build and own a mall.

Something something Cybertruck....

Something something data center....

Something something AI.

An engineer DID actually try to stop the owner from doing this. He got fired for his pains, although when the courts got involved he was able to show he had no responsibility for the collapse.

What happens when the engineer doesn't know the owner should be stopped, because they let Claude get their degree for them?

[h3avylove-deactivated20150526]

becoming an adult cheat sheet!

learn to coupon

what to do when you can’t afford therapy

cleaning your bathroom

what to do when you can’t pay your bills

stress management

quick fix meals

find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill

resume workshop

organize your closet

how to take care of yourself when you’re sick

what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment

what’s a mortgage?

how to pick a health insurance plan

hotlines list

your first gynecology appointment

what to do if the cops pull you over

things to have in your car in case of emergency

my moving out masterpost

how to make friends as an adult (video)

how to do taxes (video)

recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)

change a flat tire (video)

how to do laundry (video)

opening a bank account (video)

laundry cheat sheet

recipes masterpost

tricks to help you sleep more

what the fuck should you make for dinner?

where should you go for drinks?

alcohol: know your limits

easy makeup tips

find seat maps for your flight

self-defense tips

prevent hangovers

workout masterpost

how to write a check

career builder

browse careers

birth control information

financial management software & app (free)

my mental health masterpost

my college applications masterpost

how to jumpstart a car

sex ed masterpost

[sirflodgypodgy]

reblogging for whomever needs it

[scientia-rex]

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[taiey]

We provide free, entertaining exercise segments on our YouTube channel. Preview some of our top videos here and subscribe to our channel.

[scientia-rex]

You will be unsurprised to learn that someone already accused me of ableism for suggesting that people not smoke, move regularly in ways their body can tolerate, and eat plants.

[scientia-rex]

Do NONE of you eat canned beans with maple and ham? This is at every Safeway on Earth as far as I can tell, and if you hate most vegetables, these are a lot sweeter because of, you know, the added sugar. Eat candied plants—glazed Brussels sprouts, candied yams—if you can’t stand the regular kind.

[scientia-rex]

Oh, this is true, but you aren’t familiar with how lazy I am. I will work 36 hours straight for WORK—I’ve done it before and god willing I will never have to do it again—but cooking or preparing food has never been something I’ve devoted time to. (Partly because of hours and demands of work.) I wasn’t taught to cook because (explanation of my mother) and I didn’t even scramble eggs until I was 19, and then I set them on fire the first time I tried. I gave myself nutritional deficiencies twice during residency. The prospect of having to know what’s in my crisper AND use it before it goes bad despite the attentional difficulties, when my contamination OCD focus is already very bad, and KNOW when it’s gone bad when my only reference point is my also extremely OCD father, is untenable. I don’t enjoy cooking or making salads, and they’re pretty affordable at local places (in the sticks), so for me the math maths. However, it is definitely a good idea to learn to prepare salads and those of you with less baggage than me should definitely give it a shot! Salads can and should taste good! Raspberry vinaigrette and some candied walnuts or pecans plus some blue cheese crumbles = good shit. Who cares what plants you put it on. Except not iceberg lettuce.

[paulgadzikowski]

I once saw it observed on Tumblr that adding good tasting things you like to a salad you're making does not cancel out the nutrition in the vegetable matter

(might've been OP. sounds like the kind of thing you post)

[scientia-rex]

That wasn’t me, but I co-sign it 100%. I’d rather have patients eating salads that are completely covered in those “high fat!!!!” salad dressings that news programs love to freak out about than not eating plants. Do what you need to do to the plant to make it enjoyable to eat. Caramelize your onions. Put hollandaise sauce on your asparagus. Glaze your Brussels sprouts. Make! Life! Worth! Living! And make it possible to keep living it.

Penitence as a lifestyle is both unnecessary and often actively harmful.

[tielan]

Four elements to add flavour: "sugar, salt, fat, acid"

"sugar" - anything sweet, yes, anything. Sugar, any of the artificial sweeteners, stevia, honey, molasses, maple syrup, whatever your tastes.

"salt" - again, anything salty, and yes, anything. Salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, MSG (no, I'm not kidding: MSG) whatever adds that salty flavour to your food.

"fat" - oil or fat or lard or drippings or schmaltz

"acid" - something 'sharp' or 'tangy' in flavour. This one can be citrus like lemons or limes, or it could be aromatic alliums like garlics and onions. Vinegars and mustards.

The vinaigrette my mother made for green salads, regular as clockwork. There's a reason my sisters and I love our green salads. (Also need to discuss: salad content. Maybe later.) It can last a week (or two) in the fridge, and because it's mostly a water/oil mix, you can put it in the freezer in portions and defrost when you need it.

Lily's Vinaigrette (for green salads)

1/2 cup white vinegar (the acid) 1/8 cup vegetable oil (the oil) 1 clove garlic, minced (more acid) 1 tsp sugar (the sugar) 1/2 tsp salt (the salt) 1/4 tsp mustard (still more acid) a few good screws of pepper from the pepper grinder (spice)

Put into an empty jar. Shake well. Taste. Adjust accordingly.

Pour over salad. Toss salad.

Eat salad.

note: This is a VERY FLEXIBLE recipe. Any of the components can be switched out for components of a similar nature. Any of the vinegars will suit, including balsalmic. The oil could be coconut if that's what you like. (Heck, it could be beef tallow, although the reason we use nut and vegetable oils in salads is because they're not as powerful in flavour as animal fats.)

Also: this produces a very tangy vinaigrette - if your tastebuds are more accustomed to sweetness, then just add more 'sweet'.

To layer the flavour profile, add the same amount of the element but in a different form. Mix apple cider vinegar and balsalmic. Put in some sugar but also some maple syrup. Finely chop one of those green stalky onion things (we call them shallots, but I think the Merks call it differently).

on salads:

My Mum's salad base was: tomato, lettuce, cucumber, carrots. She would occasionally add avocado, because this was in the days before avocado was regularly available in the groceries: it was seasonal not everyday like it is today.

I tend to start with this salad base and level up: cheese cubes? Sure. A boiled egg, chopped up? Yes, please! Protein? Absolutely!!

Incidentally, protein can also be things like processed meats. Sandwich ham, cabanossi, heck, hot dog sausage links if that's what you like.

Protein hack: when we cannot be arsed prepping and cooking meat from scratch, my sisters and I will sometimes order chicken strips from a fast food restaurant. Chop up the strips into the salad, and voila! Balanced meal.

Any of this can be prepped ahead of time and stored in a fridge. It's not a sin to keep the parts apart before they come together for a good time in your mouth. (That sounded dirty. I mean, no; but also...yes.)

Nutrition is not a precise art, in spite of what people try to tell you. If it was as precise as those folks who have a shop with the nutrients you "absolutely have to buy from them to be healthy, trust them, they're the only one who's telling the truth", then humanity would not have survived as long as we have, scrimping along on what we could hunt, forage, grow, etc., for millenia before we decided that broadscale farming in civilisations was the way we were going to do worldbuilding.

Nutritious food doesn't have to be tasteless. In fact, if it's tasteless in this day and age, I'd say you're doing food wrong.

[drakensberg-blog]

The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.

[poupon]

how dare you say we piss on the poor

[silentevilx-deactivated20160627]

SO I FIND OUT MY FRIENDS AND I ARE ON OUR LOCAL NEWS WEBSITE

We were asked all these questions about how long the costumes took us, how we did it, etc. 

I paused the video right when we were asked how much money we spent on our cosplays and

fjdkaf;jkd;al

does that give you your answer

[manafromheaven]

THIS WILL NEVER NOT BE FUNNY