The Winter Market @thewintermarket - Tumblr Blog

A rare opportunity to acquire a sacrificial dungeon simply bursting with original features.

What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.

What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.

bananonbinary

also: the way “gifted” children are taught largely just rewards them for already knowing things or having a specific skill come easily to them, and thus not only gives them severe anxiety about asking for help or not knowing something right away for fear of disappointing those adult mentors, but also actively discourages them from learning HOW to learn things and pick up new skills, thus sabotaging any life they might try to pursue outside of that institutional career.

petite-abeille-deactivated20201

^^^^^^

ratliker1917

the only beings on earth im interested in appeasing are cats, i’ll fucking humiliate myself to the utmost degree so that a cat will like me, i will be the biggest clown around just to get a cat’s attention. i refuse to give this preferential treatment to any other lifeforms.

catchymemes

maxofs2d

so you know how deep learning & neural network “AI training” is like, “here’s a task, and by trying billions of times the computer will eventually find the best way to achieve that task” ?

Someone is compiling a document of every time an AI ended up achieving the programmed goal in unintended ways, instead of what was actually meant, and it’s an amazing read. (you can also submit your own examples)

Creatures bred for speed grow really tall and generate high velocities by falling over

When repairing a sorting program, genetic debugging algorithm GenProg made it output an empty list, which was considered a sorted list by the evaluation metric.

Evaluation metric: “the output of sort is in sorted order” Solution: “always output the empty set”

Evolved player makes invalid moves far away in the board, causing opponent players to run out of memory and crash

Reward-shaping a soccer robot for touching the ball caused it to learn to get to the ball and vibrate touching it as fast as possible

RL agent that is allowed to modify its own body learns to have extremely long legs that allow it to fall forward and reach the goal.

maxofs2d

Just want to come back to this post and add this amazing example as well

zodiaccity

Shoutout to the people that be tired AF but stay up late....just because.

littleblackchats

Depression. It’s called depression.

blackhipstergirly-deactivated20

Can relate

bogleech

Right wing fanatics and Trumpers AREN’T “stupid” is the thing. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. They’re cruel and they’re selfish, and many of them are in fact dangerously clever. Can we stop pretending that someone is more likely to be rational, correct and “good” the more “intelligent” they are? In my experience there’s no correlation at all. “Smart” people are as likely as anyone else to have completely wrong ideas about the world and it’s usually out of sheer malice.

ghibli-collector

Inside Howl’s Moving Castle - Dir. Hayao Miyazaki (2004)

dollsome-does-tumblr

i just read a washington post article on romcoms aging poorly due to the pushiness (and oft-stalkery conduct) of the male characters therein, and it got me thinking about pride and prejudice, and specifically darcy saying, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

because, like, that’s the seldom-portrayed romantic dream in the patriarchal hellscape that is our world, isn’t it?

a dude being willing to say, “i understand if you don’t feel the same way about me, and i’ll leave you alone forever about this if my attention is unwanted.”

so simple, yet so wonderful in its basic human decency

adulthoodisokay

and dudes to this day wonder why women still swoon over darcy

thathealeygirl

Note also: Elizabeth turns down Darcy’s first proposal, and in the process, accuses him of doing some stuff he did not do (and also some stuff he totally did).

The next day, he surprises her on her walk. He hands her a letter, asks that she read it, and then takes off.

When this happened to me after I had turned someone down IN REAL LIFE, the letter contained a passionate argument to the tune of “actually you’re wrong and you do like me and you should go out with me” and it was creepy af.

Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth starts with: “Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you”. He goes on to set the record straight about the stuff he didn’t do (as well as the stuff he did) which is *actually relevant* to Elizabeth. And he, as promised, doesn’t romance her further.

It’s totally bizarre that even now, this can be considered unusually great dude behaviour.

pluckyredhead

Darcy’s first proposal: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Darcy’s second proposal: “One word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

His whole arc in the book is about learning to consider other people’s feelings and not just his own, but the fact that it’s expressed via who gets to talk and who is told to shut up is so, so telling. The first time around, he imposes his voice on her whether she wants it or not. The second time, he asks how she feels, and in exchange, offers her the gift of his silence.

And yeah, the fact that dudes still! have! not! learned! this! lesson! is exhausting.

ghost-of-bambi

How surprising is it that Pride and Prejudice was written by a woman, when many romantic comedies are produced and directed by men?

Answer: not at all

drsarcasticraspberry

200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Mr Collins.

tzikeh

200 years later and the world is still full of guys who think they’re a Mr Darcy when they’re actually a Ross Geller.

surreal--memes

thvndermag-deactivated20200419

www.instagram.com/kiyanforootan

ratcaves

aw-but-i-didnt-get-you-anything

Twitter made the Jewish lady that posted this delete it for “threatening violence.”

Her followers spent the rest of the day tweeting this. Trolls couldn’t keep up.

asingularcanadian

Coming from someone who studies the Holocaust and the history surrounding it, It is important to remember that Nazis were human, not monsters. It’s important because if we dehumanize them we create a level of separation between us and them. It’s important because if we create that level of removal, we start ignoring the subtle signs of antisemitism because “Oh, well they’re just a normal human, not a monster, i’m sure it’ll be alright.” It’s important because when we create that level of removal, they come back in waves. It’s important because when you create that level of separation, you get the problems that we have now.

occamstireiron-deactivated20190

There is a very simple set of brain equations involved when we dehumanize the enemy, and it goes something like this:

“Nazis are monsters” “I would not be friends with a monster” The CORRECT conclusion is “I cannot be friends with Nazis” BUT PEOPLE KEEP BELIEVING THE COROLLARY “None of my friends are Nazis” “…even that one guy who keeps posting ‘ironic’ Pepe memes, who never really grew out of his 4Chan /pol/ phase, and who keeps trying to have really intense conversations with me about ‘globalists’. But he’s my friend! I’ve known him forever! He doesn’t REALLY believe any of that stuff. He’s just kind of an asshole, and we love him anyway.” This is a very bad corollary. It is an extraordinarily dangerous corollary. When we sincerely believe that we would not be friends with bad people, we ignore the signs that our friends are bad people.

(Friendly note: you can replace “Nazi” above with “sexual predator” or “racist” or “abuser”. Same hat, pretty much. There are very real reasons not to dehumanize the enemy, and they have nothing to do with the enemy’s right to humanity, and everything to do with the enemy’s ability to sneak past our lines wearing a nice-person mask.)

meltinggoldanddippingthingsinit

I’m reblogging this to my main blog because it is extremely fucking important.