#skeletontemple

[earlgraytay]

Have you seen robert pattinson in the new the batman trailer. I thought maybe you should be alerted

I HAVE NOW AND YE GADS

 I HAVE A BOOK TO EDIT, I REALLY REALLY DON’T NEED TO BE WORKING ON VENGEANCE IS MINE, AND YET HERE WE ARE, WITH BATTINSON,

[comickergirl]

Of all the girls called Linda in the Supergirl mythos, which Linda is your favorite?

(From Supergirl #34 by Sterling Gates, Jamal Igle, Keith Champagne, Nei Ruffino, and Rob Leigh)

[thou-breath-of-autumns-being]

Giving blowjobs

A++++++++++++++++

is there any better feeling in one’s mouth than a hard dick. the warmth. the way the skin slides. the little noises. dicks are ace

[thetransintransgenic]

What do you mean by being harvested? Googling gave me a bunch of stuff about tokens and bots and such, I'm not computer-literate enough for this stuff :-( All I know about captcha is that at one point it was being used to help digitalize old books.

At one point it was being used to help digitize old books. Now it’s used to label specific sections of images it got from Street View.

This is the way AI Actually Works nowadays is this:

You get a huge, huge, HUGE amount of data, and tell a lot of computers to spend a lot of time working backwards from answers you’ve labeled the data with toward the original data. Doing that a huge amount of times lets you build correlations, and correlations of correlations, and correlations of correlations of correlations, and eventually you get enough layers that when you try it, it generally works a HUGE amount of the time, even for cases where we only have data NEAR the test, not AT it. And once you’ve built the model, it’s… not that expensive to use it. And you don’t even need to do anything that smart to do this – like, little things you do can help a little, but there have been papers since the late 90s showing that, if you just keep shoveling data in, you get better results.

So when you can take your huge amount of data and invest that huge amount of resources+time, it’s pretty powerful.

The thing is, you need to GET that huge amount of data, first. You can’t automate that, ‘cause, well – you’re WORKING towards automating it. So you need to get it from humans.

Ah!, says Google – we already have a model of how to get data from humans in a way that’s generally pretty accurate! We got it when we bought ReCaptcha! Let’s just reuse that!

So they take the pictures of streets they’ve gotten from Street View. They take the thousands of different places they’ve put their Captcha system on the internet, which serve as choke-points for millions of people daily, and they tell them “label these”.

So, so, much of the progress Google has made has come directly from that labeling. They are very literally:

- using their amassed control to corral a large population to their collection points- extracting the natural resources of that population (human-level recognition skills), without any compensation or explanation, for huge profits

This is harvesting.

[georgiansuggestion]

Dear Editor, I would very much like to marry a close friend of mine. She has invented a unique alphabet for writing in her native language and she can build a working voltaic pile and I can't stop thinking about kissing her. Unfortunately I am more at ease discussing technological problems with her than matters of the heart. How do I go about asking for her hand? ~ M. Way

My Dear Mr Way–

Your Enquiry has to it Two Parts, the One being Far Simpler than the Other; The First being of such Straightforward Procedure that it may be Achieved in the Course of an Afternoon, as a Proposal after Such Long Acquaintance as you describe requires only the Consent of the Lady’s Guardian and the Lady Herself, which may be requested in the Phrase, “May I Humbly beg Permission to ask your (Daughter’s) Hand, Sir/Miss, I would be the Happiest Man on Earth if you would allow it, you know me to be an Honourable Fellow of Means, O Please, the Course of my Life and Joy depends Upon this Moment,” or Something to this Effect, as Some Years Ago it served Yours Truly in obtaining an Engagement. Yet the Tone of your Letter suggests to me it is not the Mechanism which thwarts you, but the Discovery of a Reciprocated Interest; If this is not the Case, there is no need to finish reading my Reply.

I must congratulate you in your Passion and the Subject Thereof; She sounds a Capable, Intelligent Young Woman, and should she acquiesce I wish you Every Delight in your Union. But I am Glad you have told her Nothing, for it is Inadvisable, in Any Circumstance, to speak so Fervently and Openly of one’s Sentiments to the Lady in Question, Particularly in the Only Respectable Condition in which you can meet, id est in Chaperoned Company. Thus your Debility becomes Strength, as your Desire, diverted through Terms of Science and Technology, may be so Disguised as to limit your Audience only to your Fair Venus. Begin with Conversation around your Mutual Successes and Projects which you undertook Together; From Thence to talk of your Fruitful Friendship and the Meeting of True Minds; Then a Hint, which, if she has been yearning to hear Near so Much as you have yearned to speak, she will Surely note, that your Efforts and Future Happiness may be Much Improved by a Permanent Arrangement Between Yourselves. This Gradual Path from your Works to your Feelings may ease you Both into Discussion of a Marital Nature, should Wish for it exist with Both Parties.

Yours &tc.,The Editor

[vardasvapors]

"I was at the council I speak of, for I was the minstrel and counsellor of Gilgalad." ~ Elrond, "At Rivendell", Return of the Shadow, presented without comment because it's perfect as is

AIUDSFIDJHDJG…MINSTREL OF GIL-GALAD….I’M…FUCKIGN—

god, i thought i had run out of moments (and fingers and toes to count them on) in the HOME where I had some vague theory about “hmm i mean this is probably really Out There but what if it was like ___?” only to then read Tolkien ALMOST LITERALLY ECHOING EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING.

Ok it’s not THAT close to what i was thinking since the context of that line is:

‘You remember?’ said Bingo [Frodo], looking astonished at Elrond. ‘But I thought this tale was of days very long ago,’‘So it is,’ said Elrond, laughing. ‘But my memory reaches back a long way [>to long ago]. My father was Eärendel who was born in Gondolin seven years before it fell and my mother was Elwing daughter of Lúthien daughter of King Thingol of Doriath, and I have seen many ages in the West of the World. I was at the council I speak of, for I was the minstrel and counsellor of Gilgalad…

– i.e., about the Last Alliance era and therefore not entirely in-line with tolkien’s later narrative of the Eregion Incident, unless elrond is being consciously facetious here, in a, idk, alfred pennyworth vein, but even so, i wanna….finagle it into canon, like amroth-less galadriel. IT’S CUTE. even if he was actually describing an earlier phase of his lifetime, it’s cute! um. because i have a stupid sense of humor, one of the vague theories i had WAS definitely the whole ‘what would post-apocalyptic loremastery even LOOK like’ idea described here but ran out of room to speculate if this entailed, fucking, reciting all the perfectly-remembered stories he had heard from far and wide whenever he came home. but THANKS, TOLKIEN, FOR ENABLING MY DUMBEST DESIRES.

anyway uh. what was the first thing i wanted to respond with. oh yeah ‘flakey aristocrat minstrel pipes up suddenly that this annatar person is Bad News Bears and then shapes up into a general over the course of the next 500 years’ is a fun character arc. someone who can write multichapter stories write it.

[thelioninmybed]

So after the Nirnaeth the Fëanorians "took to a wild and woodland life" which in my mind vaguely resembles a cross between a nomadic band of outlaws & a guerrilla force. Now that is in itself a nice shadowy "bereft of their power and glory of old" image but it's not actually the main point of this ask, the main point is: what if instead of a fortress this was where Elro(s/nd) ended up. Roaming guerrilla outlaw club. Maglor teaches them birdcalls & says that wolves will eat them if they run

The night was still but for the rustle of the wind roosting in the treetops and rattling at the canvas of their tents. There were no night birds. Once something large went swishing through the undergrowth and Maedhros and some soldiers went to deal with it. They did not speak of what it had been when they returned, swords wiped clean but clothing splotched with black. They might have, only Maglor cleared his throat and said it was time for supper. 

Supper was not the draw it should have been for two growing boys. 

“I don’t want to eat snails,” Elrond said, prodding at the gelatinous brown sauce and gelatinous blobs of meat upon his plate.

Maedhros spat a shell into the fire. “Then don’t. Plenty of others will be glad of them.”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t served molluscs in Sirion,” Maglor said, placatingly. “These are just the same.” He teased one daintily from its shell with what looked like a repurposed sewing needle and offered it to Elrond.

“Those were nice,” Elros said sullenly but did not push his plate away. He was hungry enough that even the thought of eating snails had lost its horror and the smell they gave off was very savoury. 

Maglor saw his resolve waver. “So are these, darling. See, they’ve been cooked with mushrooms and wild garlic. That’s a meal fit for a prince.”

“They’re all slimy.”

“I know, dearest. Just try one. For me. Couldn’t you find us any meat?” Maglor muttered that last part to his brother, who shrugged. 

“In these lands? We’re lucky the snails yet live. Soon it shall be worms and whatever carrion the wargs leave us. Or the wargs themselves.“ Maedhros tilted his head thoughtfully. “We haven’t burnt the carcass yet-”

Maglor wiped his lips primly upon the piece of tattered heraldry he was using for a napkin. “Just once I’d like a nice dinner where you don’t start off about maggots and butchery.”

“Make your mind up. It’s not getting any fresher,” said Maedhros and went back to cracking shells between his teeth.

It wasn’t Maglor’s prompting but that of their own stomachs that finally drove the twins to eat. The snails didn’t taste at all like the whelks they’d once been served in their mother’s dining hall but they looked back on them fondly all the same. They were much better than the warg jerky that came later. 

[gurguliare]

skeletontemple replied to your post: The other answer to the 'really gets around'...

this goes really well with my best second age ship, which is, celebrimbor and celebrían awkwardly feeling each other up in a tiny ost-in-edhil dorm room as they refuse to define their relationship for a millennium

Is that... concurrent with his crush on her mom