This Is How I Progress

iykyk

[martyreddie]

it's literally the evilest thing in the world to finally have time to write but then be tired. like wow you're telling me these two hours before going to bed are completely free but my brain is just Not Feeling It? fuck off

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge!

X

[anxiety-banana]

hello i would like everyone to know that sometimes you can sob your eyes out and have an existential crisis one moment and then suddenly you're booking your driver's test and applying for jobs and crocheting a blanket and maybe life isn't so bad anymore!! maybe you can feel awful and fix your life anyway!! maybe you're allowed to be a wreck and still be good enough!! i am a full on adult and have avoided getting my license for years but now i'm finally doing it because i've grown around the fear!!!! the world didn't crash and burn when i was fifteen!! i did this for myself and i'm going to be okay!!

[stevishabitat]

[anxiety-banana]

the way i am shaking with tears is an understatement I'VE BEEN QUOTED

[stevishabitat]

I'm printing it and taping it to my mirror BTW

[hylianengineer]

There is one very important thing I need people without major dietary restrictions to understand: the distress caused by allergies, celiac disease, and other food restrictions is largely not about the food.

Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.

I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.

Food is such a basic human need, and a lot of people don't really need to think about it. When your danger foods can be anywhere and everywhere, suddenly your entire life revolves around avoiding them, and it massively sucks. You get used to it and it's not a big deal most of the time, but then you go to a new restaurant, or your office has a potluck, or you've been invited to a party and suddenly it feels just as miserable and exhausting as it ever has.

[dreamingnemleria]

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[nariarts]

Longtime readers may be aware of how much I relish an excuse to bully a company, so I'm sharing the wealth;

Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

I think they have a twitter and tiktok too!

[carriesthewind]

Unfortunately, Pattie is lying.

"Pattie named herself after the region in South America." Come the fuck on. https://www.self.com/story/pattie-gonia-backpacking-drag-queen

Patagonia is not trying to "take away her name." Patagonia has no problem with her calling herself Pattie Gonia or performing as such, or using it for activism, or whatever. They are suing her to stop her from directly competing with them with a substantially similar trademark in clothing sales.

You can read the complaint here.

The relevant prayer for relief is on page 34-36. It asks the court to stop Pattie from selling, distributing, or advertising, "any goods or services that display any words or symbols that so resemble the PATAGONIA trademarks as to be likely to cause confusion, mistake, or deception;" destroy the merch she was selling that would so cause confusion; and to not do it again in the future. It doesn't ask for damages more than $1 and for attorneys fees (aka pay us back for making us have to file this stupid lawsuit).

It also asks the court to stop Pattie from trying to register her drag name as a trademark specifically to sell branded apparel that says "PATTIEGONIA" - aka the same market, to an overlapping sales base.

2. Yeah this is 100% a "brand conflict." Patagonia had no issues with her existence, her drag name, her activism. (According to facts in the complaint, which she has not denied) it had no issue with even her partnering with competing brands, as long as

When Pattie started selling her own branded merch, Patagonia tried to reach out to her to resolve things informally. They were not able to do so. (And in my opinion, the email from Pattie in response looks really really bad - as I read it, it is essentially a threat to try to use her fanbase and progressive credentials to attack and harm Patagonia's brand if they try to enforce their trademark. And to be clear - if she has issues with Patagonia's actions as a brand, using those as a private threat against the company to advance her commercial interests while continuing to publicly directly associate herself with the brand - examples both in the lawsuit and in this thread: https://bsky.app/profile/kathryntewson.bsky.social/post/3mnbadc2egk2e - is. Well, I don't think it's behavior that looks good for Pattie.)

They filed this lawsuit b/c she filed to trademark the "Pattie Gonia" brand to directly compete with Patagonia in the same market. This is 100% a brand conflict. She's just lying to people.

Two other quick comments:

OP above used scare quotes around "irreparable" harm. This happens every time there is a lawsuit for injunctive relief and the person posting about it wants to make the plaintiff sound unreasonable and absurd. Irreparable harm is just literally the legal standard for injunctive relief.

I think OP's comment that, "In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen," is ironically a good demonstration about the potential for brand confusion. Based on this comment, OP is demonstrating that their assumption, should they see "Pattie Gonia" branded clothing, is that it would be a collaboration. But Pattie Gonia wasn't trying to work with Patagonia. She specifically said she did not want to do so. She wants sell her own merch.

On Pattie's website, she says about this lawsuit,

I agree with Pattie on this point. But right now, while there are so many attacks on both the climate and on queer people, especially trans people? To lie about a (legally speaking, entirely reasonable, lawsuit) and to use people's fears and concerns in the - as OP says - "current political landscape" - to try to sell you her own merch? (Because that is what the lawsuit is about. She is telling you to harass Patagonia so she can sell you branded merch instead.)

I have a lot of feelings about someone taking the energy - our fears, our need to protect each other, our love - of our community, and redirecting it toward their own commercial benefit. It's really hard for me to see what Pattie is doing in any other light.

[thewayforward]

agreed. this is one of the few times i've encountered a corporation being right on this kind of thing. i mean, they actually met with pattie prior to this and formed an agreement that pattie immediately breached

[fipindustries]

ok this looks ultra mega based, are you kidding me? can you imagine the bullshit i could get up to with this bad boy? fuck yes i want ten

[mint-corset]

Wait are iPhone bros coping because Apple has to be more universal? Lol.

[such-justice-wow]

Boo hoo i'll be able to add more physical storage to my phone and be able to change out batteries if they degrade as well as all these other optional features I won't have to touch

[lectorel]

Continuing in the trend of political cartoons depicting milquetoast moderate positions seem so much cooler and more badass than they are

[domina-honoribila]

I love how they add totally absurd things no one is asking for to make the idea look crazy. And still, I must emphasize, failing to make this look like a bad idea.

[teaboot]

"Is this what you want? Is this ugly stupid bullcrap what you want??" the biggest loudest idiot in the room asks, holding up a picture of the hottest looking shit I've ever seen

[algorithmist]

Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI.

absolutely insane

[tilthat]

TIL that hard disks are so sensitive to vibration, that just screaming at them diminishes their performance

via reddit.com

[rnoonpie]

getting screamed at diminishes my performance too, u ain’t special

[sensiblereblogifposts]

Reblog if getting screamed at diminishes your performance

[moondane-lovers]

TO ANYONE WHO USES DISCORD- FOUR AI SCRAPING BOTS HAVE BEEN SECRETLY ADDED TO YOUR SERVERS WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT

Saw this going around and tested it myself, and I can confirm that this is unfortunately legit. Four hidden bots have been placed in any existing or newly created Discord server that are harvesting data, images, and most concerningly, one seems to be a face swap bot.

Due to them being invisible, banning them from your servers isn't possible without their ID's, which I've typed out for easy access.

1153984868804468756 1288638725869535283 1090660574196674713 1104973139257081909

Banning is done with the /ban command with each string pasted in one at a time. Four ban commands in total.

Image proof below and further information. This was in my PERSONAL server that has existed for +5 years. Discord is harvesting your shit without your consent, fight back.

[unluckyxse7en]

Hey so in case you're like me and wondered: Can you ban members without them being in the server?

The answer is yes, you absolutely can! It'll look like this - the numbers you paste will be what's "banned"

However my sibling tried this in her servers and found that One of them was NOT a string of numbers, like so:

And for clarity it isn't a difference in user or device, this is what she got elsewhere:

So if you ban these numbers and the message shows the actual username? Pretty sure that means they were in there.

Very unpleasant way to check the veracity of this post but hopefully this is a helpful tip for anyone who was concerned - my sib would have No Reason to add these in herself and didn't have any clue it was in there.

Personally, I'd say even if you are still worried about misinfo/fearmongering/etc from this post, think of it this way - worst case scenario is you're banning a bot you'll never use or need. Not a person, a bot. There's no real damage done playing it safe and running the ban commands through, aside from maybe losing some time doing so.

Best of luck everyone.

[actualdraccus]

Wishing I'd seen this more quickly - Had to take these things out of a lot of creative spaces just now. I'm not convinced that the username only shows up if they were in there, but I do think it's better safe than sorry, especially when peoples' art is involved.

[cloud--atlas]

@quidnunc-life @inkvoices @alistrawrites

[xenthosss]

@returnsnull7404 hey this is VERY much real I just took all of them off my discord

[ominous-signs]

This worked on my end too (two servers, one of which only has ME ALONE as a member! Also worked for a friend who had a similar experience)

[elierlick]

We should all be talking about KOSA. The bill would mean the end of the open internet in the US, and it was just approved by a House committee for a floor vote. The act is ostensibly designed to regulate the age of social media users. However, it actually deanonymizes the internet and allows the government to sue LGBTQ+ websites.

Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation is one of the main lobbying groups behind this push. They have publicly stated they want to use the law to restrict LGBTQ+ and abortion-related content. Blocking children under 16 from accessing the internet means young people will be isolated within their communities. They cannot discuss LGBTQ+ issues with their online peers. They could not request help to access abortion clinics. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who once personally sent the FBI to my doorstep to harass me, admits the law is intended to shield “minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture.”

“The through-line couldn’t be clearer: destroying online anonymity is a way for government to be able to identify ¬— and ultimately punish — dissenters,” explains Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The DHS has already subpoenaed hundreds of anonymous accounts tracking and protesting ICE. KOSA would make it even easier for the government to access your data.

Read the full article in The Intercept!

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

‘Heroic actions are a natural tendency’: why bystander apathy is a myth

Modern research shows the public work together selflessly in an emergency, motivated by a strong impulse to help

“The notion that people panic and run screaming for the exits is a Hollywood fiction,” said Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in group behaviour at the University of St Andrews.

“Characteristically, people stay and help each other,” he said. “We found this during the 7/7 attacks on the underground and the 1999 attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, where people looked after each other even though they feared other bombs.

“In our own research on the Leytonstone tube attack in 2015, there was an amazing level of spontaneous coordination by bystanders: some directed others away from danger. Some distracted the attacker. Some confronted the attacker. Each was able to act because of the others. Heroism was a feature of the group, not just the individual,” he added.

Prof Clifford Stott, a specialist in the psychology of crowds and group identity at Keele University, agreed. Modern research, he said, showed “bystander apathy” was a myth. Instead, strangers often work together in emergency situations with highly sophisticated unity.”

[cephalopodvictorious]

Bystander apathy is a myth invented by the New York Times to cover up that the police were called by several residents of the building, but the cops refused to act. The cops then told the Times that 38 people just watched her die (a seemingly arbitrary number and a physical impossibility based on where the attacks occurred), and the Times ran with it. In fact, Kitty was alive when the cops got there, and was being held and comforted by one of her friends who lived in the building because one of the people who saw her get attacked from across the street called her friend to go get her. Because people care.

The Bystander Effect Started from a Lie

You have just been attacked. How likely is it that someone will come to your help? If you remember the infamous case of Kitty Genovese in 19

[moosepower]

I will always re-blog this. The story of Kitty Genovese’s murder has gone down in history as a story about everyone watching it happen and doing nothing and none of the story is true.

[ames-draws]

I'm fed up with "maybe later".

[petaltexturedskies]

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Susan Sontag, from At the Same Time

[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.

[eravioli]

I just started grad school this fall after a few years away from school and man I did not realize how dire the AI/LLM situation is in universities now. In the past few weeks:

I chatted with a classmate about how it was going to be a tight timeline on a project for a programming class. He responded "Yeah, at least if we run short on time, we can just ask chatGPT to finish it for us"

One of my professors pulled up chatGPT on the screen to show us how it can sometimes do our homework problems for us and showed how she thanks it after asking it questions "in case it takes over some day."

I asked one of my TAs in a math class to explain how a piece of code he had written worked in an assignment. He looked at it for about 15 seconds then went "I don't know, ask chatGPT"

A student in my math group insisted he was right on an answer to a problem. When I asked where he got that info, he sent me a screenshot of Google gemini giving just blatantly wrong info. He still insisted he was right when I pointed this out and refused to click into any of the actual web pages.

A different student in my math class told me he pays $20 per month for the "computational" version of chatGPT, which he uses for all of his classes and PhD research. The computational version is worth it, he says, because it is wrong "less often". He uses chatGPT for all his homework and can't figure out why he's struggling on exams.

There's a lot more, but it's really making me feel crazy. Even if it was right 100% of the time, why are you paying thousands of dollars to go to school and learn if you're just going to plug everything into a computer whenever you're asked to think??

[enki2]

[hylianengineer]

@copperbadge this seems up your alley

[copperbadge]

If the system ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess! Accounting may not be the oldest profession, but someone had to keep the books for them.

I mean, in theory I know that Excel is based on the structure of earlier accounting technology that's been around for hundreds of years -- what do we think we did to track commerce before computers? -- but it still kind of blows my mind to, for example, look at my ancestor's journal from a whaling voyage in 1770 and see spreadsheets in the back.

[charaznablespeteevee]