srry2bother

[wokefrogvirus]

let’s have a blast with mama

[oblivioustoast]

photographer credit from the notes!

[augustdementhe]

YAY, CREDIT. Go buy a print from him, if you're so inclined:

SHOP | kunalphotography

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[theunquietworld]

i’m reading emma thompson’s diaries from the filming of sense and sensibility and there are some really great bits

danny de vito sent good-luck flowers on their first day of shooting

in the published draft of the script, colonel brandon and willoughby fight a duel offscreen after brandon confronts him about impregnating beth, brandon’s ward

“kissing hugh [grant] was very lovely. glad i invented it. can’t rely on austen for a snog, that’s for sure. we shoot the scene on a hump-backed bridge. two swans float into shot as if on cue. everyone coos. ‘get rid of them,’ says ang [lee]. ‘too romantic.’

for a number of outdoor scenes, they would fire a shotgun in the air just before the cameras started rolling to get the local crow population to shut the fuck up for a few minutes

there was a dedicated line item in the budget for hiring flocks of sheep for exterior shots, ang lee was determined to use them as often as he could

“later found ang looking at the estuary with a mournful expression. i went and stood beside him. after a moment he said, waving towards the water, ‘tide goes in, tide goes out, tide goes in, tide goes out — and still no sex.’ ‘do you miss it?’ i enquired, after i’d stopped laughing. he nodded sadly. his family won’t be back for weeks.”

while filming the scenes at the palmers’ house with the screaming baby, it turns out that “we’ve hired the calmest babies in the world to play the hysterical thomas. one did finally start to cry but stopped every time chris yelled ‘action’. later: babies smiled all afternoon. buddhist babies. they didn’t cry once. we, however, were all in tears by 5 p.m.”

“very nice lady served us drinks in hotel and was followed in by a cat. we all crooned at it. alan [rickman] to cat (very low and meaning it): ‘fuck off’. the nice lady didn’t turn a hair. the cat looked slightly embarrassed but stayed.”

during the london ballroom scene hugh laurie kept treading on the train of imelda staunton’s gown, “which pulled it down so far it exposed her boobs. keep it in, i said, but she wouldn’t.”

“sunday, 11 june: drank far too much last night and woke at 5:30 a.m. could’ve gone on drinking all night. quite grateful for a hangover, it provides a bit of peace. walked on to my balcony completely naked last night and took the couple that have moved into the suite next door slightly by surprise. walked back in calmly affecting insouciance and then bit all my pillows, one after the other.”

while resetting a scene involving a carriage, “ang rode off on a bicycle and didn’t return. found him locked in the loo at trafalgar, having broken the key. he’s being rescued at present.”

“noon. finish scene with alan. me: ‘oh! i’ve just ovulated.’ alan (long pause): ‘thank you for that.’”

“hugh g. in a spot of bother up la, apparently. something to do with a blow job. it’s all right for some, i thought.”

[redstonedust]

for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.

[ralfmaximus]

Neural Nets have existed for decades and are genuinely useful. It's a form of AI that recognizes patterns, and can do stuff like identify cancer cells, tell whether an egg is fertilized or not, detect fraud, and optimize routes.

Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.

And so on.

The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.

But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.

If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.

But they wouldn't understand any of it.

That's ChatGPT.

And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.

But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.

I fucking hate it.

[pankendev]

(snaps out of it) OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING!! HOLY JESUS CHRIST FUCK WHY DID NOBODY TRY TO STOP ME (eases back into it) ahhhh. yeah this feels right

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This is why you shouldn't take off The Amulet to shower.

[sadclowncentral]

so many misguided metaphors around violence and desire. if the open maw of a panting beast fills you with the want to be devoured, that does not make you prey. while the rabbit trembles in fear, its deepest desire is to run. evolution demands it. in fact, the desire to be eaten does not make you any small animal at all.

it makes you a fruit.

[sumverendus]

[sandpancakecat]

[marithlizard]

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.

[prismatic-bell]

HOLY SHIT THIS EXPLAINS WHY I GOT LAID OFF

TAYLOR FARMS WAS OUR BIGGEST CUSTOMER

(By like...a lot. Probably 85% of the jobs I ran were Taylor Farms.)

Outbreak is considered to have started 1 May, I was laid off on the 27th. That would do it.

HEB-branded greens also come from Taylor. Simple Truth Organic is also a Taylor brand sold exclusively through the Kroger conglomerate.

CANADA, THIS MEANS YOU TOO. I used to run English/French bilingual product for EBF, and I shipped to the Baja California warehouse right alongside the stuff for the US.

[satan-offical]

Teacher: guys this Tumblr post is 36281992 years old and only the long lost Tumblr princess can read it

Me: but teacher, I can read it just fine *starts reading in perfect tumblanese*

[satan-offical]

I posted this yesterday and it already has 3k notes

[cutecipher]

sir please calm down i didnt "edit" crash bandicoot into your wedding pictures he was an invited guest

[grickle14]

Patron.

[enchantedbook]

Dante Alighieri’s 'Inferno' by Amos Nattini, 1923

[mask131]

They look strangely comfy for damned souls tortured in the lowest circle of Hell...

[a-book-of-creatures]

😐👍

[dailycatsblog]

[homunculus-argument]

It would be nice to have enough space to have two pets, to watch them play. Beastie #1 approaching Beastie #2 like "hey can I fit your entire face in my mouth" and the other one is like no you may not, and the first one's like "no actually I'm pretty sure that I can" and you're just sitting there watching two furry idiots go

[sizzlingcandyjellyfish]

NEVER be vulnerable. FLUSH your medication down the toilet. LIE when people ask how you’re doing. SUPPRESS your feelings. ALWAYS be irritable and abrasive. MAKE SURE you push away anyone who’s close to you. CANCEL your therapy appointment.

[artbyblastweave]

Easily the most annoying kind of vampire in the world are the ones where you finally corner the fuckers and when you're going in with the stake they start spouting off sociology 101 bullshit to try and weasel out of it. "Oh, no ethical consumption under capitalism," "oh, the rich are the real vampires if you think about it-" yeah, yeah, you ate like fifty homeless people, asshole. Hold still

[dialectrician]

Okay but if you aren't a vegetarian your case against vampires is actually pretty weak.

[artbyblastweave]

I SAID HOLD STILL

[bamfspock]

Happy Fucking Moon Day

[bamfspock]

saw this suddenly get a flurry of notes which means it is once again fucking moon day! Happy fucking moon day, everyone.

[bamfspock]

hello all, it's Fucking Moon Day Monday

[dduane]

Oh, BTW...

Judge Gives Final Approval of $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the landmark settlement in the class action copyright lawsuit on Monday. Authors and publishers are e

Anthropic illegally downloaded some 500,000 titles, and 92% of those eligible for an award—both authors and publishers are entitled to payment—had opted into the class action. Martínez-Olguín denied all but two requests to opt out of the agreement. “We applaud the court’s final approval of this settlement, which represents an important victory in the larger battle to hold big tech accountable for its unscrupulous appropriation of intellectual and creative properties that clearly belong to authors and publishers,” said Maria Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, in a statement. Pallante praised the court for recognizing that downloading from pirate sites “is not a choice we should simply accept as an efficiency for the infringer; on the contrary, it’s abhorrent conduct that should never be normalized.” She also argued that fair use should not be extended to allow tech companies to copy copyrighted materials, and that tech giants should look to licensing agreements to train their AI models.

Now we'll see how long the payouts take to come through. I had between a half and two-thirds of my lifetime output stolen by these schmucks, but payouts from many of those thefts will be split 50/50 with the publishers. (Which strikes me as fair enough.)

So the waiting continues. Meanwhile, so does work...