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JVL
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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we're not kids anymore.
noise dept.
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@thesernotthedroidsurlooking4
This has been my main argument against "AI" from the very beginning.
OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.
And worse, they're trying to destroy the free sources that they stole from. It's destruction of human knowledge on an unprecedented scale. The burning of the library of Alexandria has nothing on this.
Lesser-known steps of the writing process:
Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once
Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards
Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop
Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere
Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off
Imagine that everywhere in the mechanical engineering world suddenly got infatuated with lasers.
Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.
Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."
And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -
"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.
Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"
More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.
Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.
Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.
An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.
Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.
The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.
Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?
Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.
You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.
You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.
"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"
Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.
But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.
And you think you are going mad.
And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.
This post is about AI.
fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d
I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty
I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.
Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials--it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.
When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.
Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I'd hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.
See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he'd send in response to letters from very young citizens...and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.
So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:
Dear President Obama, I am writing about the environment. I am sad that the Great Barrier Reef is hurt. Also the Amazon Rainforest. Can you help? PLEASE DON'T WRITE BACK TO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOG AGAIN. WE ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT BO. WE COMPLETED THE MAZE AND COLORED HIM IN. It is good that you love your pet a lot. But try to remember the environment. It is also important.
The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.
Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?
I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.
And often, they are assholes, too.
I have this headcanon in my head that Rafael didn't ever actually believe that Scott's asthma was real. Like a scene plays in my head where Scott is forced to get a ride with him, and once he enters the car, Rafael is like
"See? I told you it was all in your head. You just had to get over it."
"What is?"
"Oh, your asthma. I'm proud of you."
And the entire ride is painfully quiet as Scott looks at the window with his eyes blurry.
I so agree and I love this post because I feel like Scott's asthma (like his dynamic with Rafael) gets overlooked. Scott describes his asthmatic condition as "severe," which is a medical term in this context and means his life was really ruled by asthma. Other scenes back this up: when Scott's asthma returns, he collapses in the middle of class, and then suffers regular intense onsets of debilitating attacks that have him on the ground, which he says was his asthma coming back "as bad as ever." In the brief scene before the bite, he can't handle a short walk through the woods, I suspect because it was mildly cold and a bit damp.
Despite this, it also makes sense to me that he'd still be on a team and work out; I've known other people with severe asthma who were talented athletes. To get back to Rafael, I think the uncertainty of a chronic condition like this would infuriate him, particularly since it's something his wife would be the bigger expert in, which he would resent. Scott's asthma would become a shifting target that could variously be something Scott was lying about or exaggerating to get pity, something his wife was lying about, a mindset Scott needed to get over, something Rafael had to toughen him out of, something his wife was lying about, proof Scott was weak or effeminate, something Scott made up to cost him money, proof Scott wasn't his biological child etc. In moments like above he'd use it as this backhanded conditional praise that only cements his superiority and worldview. And Scott still on some level accepts it: picking fights with his dad is dangerous, for one thing, and he also does want his father to love him. Moments like this seem inevitable in that dark time Scott mentions once--and then, tellingly, never again--when he lived alone with his father.
ID: A youtube comment with 11 likes by Niceone, it says "I've lived 46 years without knowing this. How nice of life to save some of the best bites for later." End ID.
Normally, people tend to get frustrated, even jokingly, if they miss out on something. This comment was on a song from 1974 and it made me smile quite much. Simply appreciative. Like a dessert after dinner.
It is genuinely mind blowing to me just how many Tumblr posts have changed my life for the better and taught me to be happier. Not all of the thoughts originate on Tumblr, but the way people collect and frame them has literally changed my brain chemistry.
Reblog to save a duck
Quack quack
It’s getting to be that time of year where more people are going outside to parks and stuff so i thought it would a good idea to reblog this again
Once I was feeding some ducks from a bag of birdseed I brought with me, and this woman next to me looked so confused and asked what I was feeding them
When I said it was birdseed she just went “oh- can they actually eat that? Is that safe?”
I didnt know how to respond like, at all, so I just pointed at the duck and said “bird”
She then had a look on her face like a new groove was just forcibly carved in her brain and said softly “oh my fucking god”
ɯǝlɯ
floating loafs on several degrees of squish
You’re welcome 🧄
top 5 horror movies
-having a job
-not having a job
-applying for jobs
-the job market
-the concept of working my whole life
emo heron in boots
it’s crazy how much diversity there can be in one species…these are all pictures of the same bird species (red-tailed hawk)
An the facial expression on every single one of them is "HEY STOP IT!!"
hobbies should not take up this much space. there ought to be a hobby pocket dimension, where I am able to store everything I need in a breadbox that weighs no more than my cat.
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
under 18, AI is a net positive
under 18, AI is a net negative
18-29, AI is a net positive
18-29, AI is a net negative
30-45, AI is a net positive
30-45, AI is a net negative
46-60, AI is a net positive
46-60, AI is a net negative
over 60, AI is a net postive
over 60, AI is a net negative
Question 2/3
How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?
Frequently (multiple times per month)
Often (multiple times per year)
Occasionally (a couple times per year)
Rarely (once every couple of years)
Never :(
Question 3/3
If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?
under 18, more inclined
under 18, less inclined
18-29, more inclined
18-29, less inclined
30-45, more inclined
30-45, less inclined
46-60, more inclined
46-60, less inclined
over 60, more inclined
over 60, less inclined
Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!
🫶
