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A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previou

ayeforscotland

Let’s fucking go

made-in-manetheren

This is HUGE.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

TL;DR Google reeeeeally stepped in it this time.

alianoralacanta

5. If the words are Google's, this solidifies the position of universities who demand that all answers from AI are fully cited. If all the in-line citations now have to be (Google, 2026), that's going to make it obvious when someone's trying to use Google as a source. There's still the difficulty with people who are academically dishonest by trying to pass off the AI writing as their own. 6. 91% accuracy is officially too low to use as a source of references, which means the AI can't be used as a source of references either. This makes it less legitimate for such purposes than Wikipedia of all places (Wikipedia might need date/time proof of when it was accessed for the reference to be valid, but at least it is possible to prove the link existed at a particular date and time). 7. This will help encourage the rollout of courses on how to avoid AI search for students who need academic accuracy, because it's statistically not good enough to use. 8. This strengthens the case intellectual property authors have against Google in the EU, as this is proof that an intellectual property transfer took place.

tsulasgi

Making Chains - Virginia Stroud (Cherokee), No date, Cherokee Outpatient Medical Center , Tahlequah, Oklahoma

sistertaxon

actual criticisms of academia:

cost of education acting as class barrier

exploitation of graduate workers

colonialist past and present

ties to military industrial complex

danger of power structure entrenching and justifying orthodox views on social issues

criticisms of academia that get made:

those damn ivory tower academics are wasting money learning about things

natalieironside

Shout out to trans women who aren’t computer scientists or musicians or avant-garde artists or whatever.

Shout-out to tgirls who work at Taco Bell. Thank u queen, society would collapse without you

snkrfnd

Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the “gay Taco Bell”, but since I was coming from the “gay Howard Johnson’s” I wasn’t shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they’d worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the “gay Taco Bell” on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven’t changed much in 20 years. I’m still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city’s version of the “gay Taco Bell” is key to survival.

natalieironside

Thank u for sharing this with us

bookshelfdreams

One Museum A Month - May: Thüringer Bauernhäuser

An open-air museum this month! The oldest one in Germany, according to themselves, which I am not sure how reliable that claim is; I haven't fact-checked.

Three 17th century buildings, all taken from their original places and re-built in the Heinrich-Heine-Park in Rudolstadt, Thüringen. Obviously not enough for a real museum village, but a lovely little 3-sided farm complex with 2 houses and a barn.

All 3 beautiful timber frame houses

It's tiny, but I was very surprised by how well-curated the whole thing was. Often, with things like this, the buildings are overstuffed, there's just lots of vaguely historical-looking objects thrown in, yk? Here, the rooms really looked like someone might love there; not bare, but also not messy.

Time-wise, objects were kind of all over the place, but I feel that is authentic for this kind of historical farm.

Old farm furniture is often richly painted; you can find historical closets like this at antique shops sometimes, often they will have the names or initials of the owners, and the year they were made.

Closet bed!

The best tiled stove I have ever seen in my life, I want this in my house so had.

A wedding chest. The brides trousseau would be packed in here. Also often used to show off a family's wealth.

I just love how detailed everything was. Aesthetics are one of the fundamental things that make us human. Throughout history, it was never enough for things to be just functional, they must be beautiful as well.

The highlight of the whole thing was this recreation of an apothecary. I just love old shop furniture like this, the dozens of tiny drawers, all neatly labeled, the counter, the scales. I also learned something about traveling pharmacists! Which apparently were a thing that existed, and they were respected too, they had certificates and everything. Idk why I never considered that this was an occupation, but it makes sense. This area used to be very rural and isolated; of course there'd be all sorts of traveling craftsmen and merchants.

Of course there also was a spinning/weaving room, but unfortunately, I could only look in through the door. Would have loved a closer look at that loom.

Look at this yarn winder with a built-in measuring function! It's so clever, and I want something like this so bad.

Cake! It looked very nice, but unfortunately was mediocre at best.

Some more impressions:

Thüringer Bauernhäuser, Kleiner Damm 12, 07407 Rudolstadt open April-October, Tuesday-Sunday, 11:00-18:00

saja-star

a phrase that kinda bothers me when talking about women's historical roles in europe is "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear it so often, those exact words in the same order even. and once you learn a little more you realize that the massive gaping hole in that list is fiberwork. im not an expert and have no hard numbers, but i wouldnt be surprised if fiberwork took up nearly as much time as the other three tasks combined, so it's not a trivial omission.

it's not a hot take to say that the mass amnesia about fiberwork is linked to the belittlement of women's work in geneal, but i do think there's a special kind of illusion that is cast by "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear that and think "well i cook and clean and take care of children (or i know someone who does) and i have a sense of how much work that is" and you know of course that cooking and cleaning were more laborious before modern technology, but still, you have a ballpark estimate you think, when in fact you are drastically underestimating the work load.

i also think that this just micharacterizes the role of women's work in livelihoods? cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children are all sisyphean tasks that have to be repeated the next day. these are important, but not the whole picture. when we include all kinds of fiberwork—and other things, such as making candles or soap—women's work looks much more like manufacturing, a sphere we now associate more with men's work. i feel like women's connection to making and craftsmanship is often elided.

queeranarchism

And part of 'cooking' was brewing, pickling, preserving, fermenting..

Also memory-holed is how incredibly time-consuming laundry was and how much of it relied on physical strength.

beatrice-otter

Using a drop spindle to spin fiber into thread (which was the only way to spin thread until the spinning wheel made it to Europe in the 13th Century), and a warp-weighted loom to weave cloth, it takes a long time to turn fiber into finished items. (And even before you start spinning, you have to prepare the fibers, which is additional labor.) For an experienced adult, probably somewhere around 108 hours per square yard of fabric.

A simple dress or robe that covers an adult from shoulders to mid-calf will usually take about two yards of fabric.

Bret Devereaux lays this out if you're interested in looking deeper at the numbers: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/26/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivd-spinning-plates/

apricops

also - however much effort you thought it took to “cook and clean” back then, it took way more than you thought. “Cleaning” clothes meant mending them by hand before taking them to the river, scrubbing them (with soap you made by hand), and hauling a heavy basket of wet clothes back to your home to wring and beat them dry. “Cooking” meant carrying your grain to the mill, carrying the flour back, sifting it, kneading dough by hand, and baking it, and that was just the bread. Then it’s back to the river (or well or cistern or whatever your water source was) to haul more heavy buckets of water before plucking birds, gutting fish, and harvesting vegetables from the garden, and only now can you actually start doing what we think of as “cooking.” With an open fire that you have to tend while cooking. All of this work had to be done every single day On top of childcare and the massive workload of spinning textiles. And any seasonal work like pickling or preserving fruits and vegetables. And any communal village tasks like rope making or construction. You know those memes that say “a peasant had x many holidays?” A “holiday” just meant that your family didn’t have to do free labor for your lord on top of everything I just mentioned. Medieval women were EXTREMELY busy with tasks that were often physically demanding and juggling multiple tasks at once all day every day.

Being a peasant sucked. It was really really really bad. Everyone say “thank you industrial revolution”

hood-ex

drueginger

Folks, it has happened again on another job I applied for.

discoursedrome

thesituation

open tumblr, see something that pisses me off, write a snarky post, delete it, write a slightly more earnest post, edit it for 5 minutes, delete it, close tumblr

inkskinned

you get used to it, but it's tiring, because they need you to understand your own life as a series of goalposts. what college are you going to, what's your major going to be, whatcha gonna do with that, oh where will you settle down, when can i expect grandkids.

for the longest time my goals have been so blurry that they track into each other, their undefined edges slipping quietly back into the soft night. today i want to be a writer; tomorrow i will want to be a doctor, later i will wish i took that law school free ride. how the fuck do people just know what they want to do with their life?

where do you want to be in five years? i want to be alive; which is a huge step for me. ten years ago i would have said i want to be asleep and meant i hope that i'm dead by then.

but i want a yellow kitchen and a stand mixer. i want a garden and a fruit tree (cherry, if i can make that happen) and a big yard for my dogs to play in. i want to come home and read poetry out loud to someone and have them close their eyes to listen. i want a summer watergun fight. i want to make snowmen. i want to be the house to go to for halloween. i want my life to settle around me in a softness, for it to lay down gently. if i am very, very, very lucky, i want to travel; finally go someplace overseas.

of course i don't know what i want to be doing professionally. what i actually want to be doing is curling up beside my dog, settling in to read. i want to be making myself a cup of good coffee.

i can't answer the other questions. whenever people asked me what do you want to be when you grow up, i used to say i hope i'm happy.

i hope i'm still kind, five years from now. i hope i never get jaded and mean. i hope i have stayed in therapy. what do you picture yourself doing? when will you actually be an adult about this? why are you so afraid of being ambitious?

am i not ambitious? the other day i rearranged my furniture which doesn't quite fit into my apartment. i watered my plants. i'm going to try to propagate a cherry seed. my five year goal is to spend more time laughing. to lie down in a patch of sunwarm moss. to relax for a minute. to close my eyes and think oh thank god. this is why i stayed. this is finally it.

bitchesgetriches

hi aunties!! admittedly, i’m kind of stuck. i’ve been a nurse since 2021, when i graduated. i’m going to turn 28 this december, and have about 30k worth of student loans still left (a lot, i know, but it’s progress). i went to a university, had to take out loans even with federal help and only recently got my loan moved away from sallie mae. ive had a good career, but i want to go back to school. i’d really like to go back for my a degree in biology, maybe even a phd, but the cost amounts make my skin crawl. any idea what i should do? this is something i really want, but with that amount sitting over my head…it feels unlikely. thanks for all you do 🩷

First off: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE. One of my besties is an ICU nurse and holy shit the things you people do to keep the rest of us alive...

Anyway, you're a working person in an important field. That's very different from applying to undergrad as an untested lil high school student. Which means you have lots more options for funding!

I'll link to our guide to paying for higher ed below, but one of the things you might look into is if your current hospital employer has any programs for funding employees' "continuing education." They might have grants or partial tuition reimbursement available. And if that's the case, you should look carefully at the requirements: they might require you to work for them for a specific number of years after receiving your new degree, or to maintain a specific GPA.

How To Pay for College Without Selling Your Soul to the Devil

What We Talk About When We Talk About Student Loans

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ace-of-bass

Most PhD programs (in the sciences at least, which is what you specified, in the US, which is where it seems you are) are fully funded!

I went to graduate school for a PhD in engineering in 2020 (defended last summer) and paid maybe $800/year to the school (just some weird activity fee, idk). I had full tuition remission AND health insurance AND a stipend to live on (initially $34k, ended at $37.5k). I did an interdisciplinary program and was involved slightly in our unionization effort, so I knew people in our biology PhD programs, and they also got full tuition remission and a comparable stipend.

The advice I got when I was considering applying for grad school and talking to grad students I knew was, "don't ever pay for a PhD, don't go to a place that you need to self-fund," and it wasn't difficult to take that advice.

So I'd say if you want to do a PhD in the sciences, go for it!!! Apply first and if you don't get the funding you want/need, apply to different schools the next year. Also if you wanna talk about PhD applications, feel free to ask/message me - my experience will be *slightly* different cause my department was electrical engineering, but my field was computational neuroscience so I feel I have enough knowledge of how the bio programs work to be at least a little helpful.

eldritchboop

@ace-of-bass is spot on. Don’t go to grad school unless you’re getting funding that is *at least* covering your tuition and preferably your insurance and something of a stipend. A healthy program has these options and will use them to help recruit you. You might be a TA or a research assistant (RA) but you will build skills and not take out loans.

macgyvermedical

PSA:

Acetaminophen/paracetamol has a hard stop upper dose limit, above which it becomes extremely toxic.

That limit is 4g (8 “extra strength” (500mg) tablets) in 24 hours (about 2 tablets every 6 hours).

A single dose of 22 extra strength tablets can kill you.

Taking 12 or more tablets per day for more than a week can also kill you (this is about 3 tablets every 6 hours).

Symptoms of overdose take up to 24 hours to manifest, and are fairly difficult to distinguish from other problems. They include abdominal pain (especially right upper quadrant), nausea, malaise, and confusion.

The antidote (n-acetylcystine) must be given within 8hours of ingestion in order to be useful.

After 10 hours the only thing that will work is a liver transplant.

You might think “why would I ever accidentally take so much?”

Well, acetaminophen is in almost everything in the cold/flu/pain aisle. Migraine combos like Excedrin, cold and flu combos like NyQuil, basically anything that says “non-aspirin pain relief”, and anything that’s branded as a fever reducer. It’s all probably acetaminophen/paracetamol.

So the goal of this post is to get you to read the labels on your medications. Because taking taking Tylenol and NyQuil together for a week (like you might if you had the flu) could kill you.

theweirdwideweb

300 year old leather star map by the Skidi, one of the four bands of the Pawnee tribe. The Skidi Pawnee historically lived on the Central Plains of Nebraska and Kansas.

andhumanslovedstories

There’s an emotion only unlocked when you live in a house with multiple stories. I call it “the stair emotion” and it’s when you realize the object you need is on the other side of yet another trip up and down those goddamn stairs. It’s the closest I get to transcending the desire for material goods. Maybe I don’t need that notebook. Maybe I don’t need anything.