Ramblings of an Idle Physicist

Ph D in making unintelligible talks with pretty pictures.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[eusuchia]

three of them

[wanderingcoasties]

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”

— Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg commenting on how weird gendered defaults in entertainment are, and why we should think twice about them. Excerpted from this longer original post. (via 360degreesasthecrowflies)

[allthesepurplelights]

[polls-by-fip]

im curious about a specific generational divide

regardless of you being queer or not, did your parents ever gave you the "if you turn out to be gay it would be fine" talk, before you ever had the chance to say anything on your own about that?

gen z, yes

gen z, no

millenial, yes

millenial, no

gen x, yes

gen X, no

baby boomer, yes

baby boomer, no

Remaining time: 5 days 12 hours

because it happened to me and im wondering if this was a product of the ongoing cultural change around gay issues. before i ever had the chance to say to my parents "i am this" my mom was already sitting me aside to tell me "if there is anything you want to tell me, i want you to know ill accept you no matter what"

[azspot]

“Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.”

— Everyone Into The Grinder

[bob-artist]

Bittern at the grocery store

[sparkly-heretic]

A very elegant crime.

(edit: my partner just pointed out that maybe the bittern is going to pay, and that's a good point)

[bob-artist]

Don't worry, his disguise was flawless and he got away with his snack :)

[teaboot]

I think that if you had enough daughters AND played your cards right you could spring Mambo Number Five out at the EXACT right gathering and shatter your entire family's trust forever

[teaboot]

The secret is to name them out of order with the lyrics so by the time anyone catches on it's too late

[teaboot]

For me personally the ideal gathering would be my funeral

[teaboot]

A little bit for Monica, she's my wife

A little bit for Erica, for her strife

My books all go to Rita, cause she reads

My greenhouse goes to Tina, she plants trees

The furniture is Sandra's, on my lawn

Jewelry for Mary, she can pawn

Ashes go to Jessica, that's my plan

A little bit of me inside a can (ah!)

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

Ferdinand von Wright (Finnish, 1822–1906), "Smews"

[unknought]

For me the biggest thing that makes the Fable shutdown a Leopards Eating People's Faces moment is not the fact that Anthropic asked for regulation and got regulated (although there is some of that) but that Anthropic has gone out of their way to make "AI safety" into a specifically nationalist issue, about ensuring US technological dominance. For example from a few days ago:

“These safeguards prevent foreign adversaries from using our most capable models in ways that pose severe safety risks. The US and its allies hold an edge in frontier chips and the highly optimized software that runs them at full potential,” the company said in a statement to WIRED. “These safeguards ensure Claude isn't used to erode that advantage—by optimizing chips developed by those adversaries, for example.”

and now Anthropic's noncitizen employees can't use Mythos! Which isn't to say that there is a direct causal link there or that Anthropic is responsible for the Trump administration's actions, but one might hope that it would make Anthropic warier of that kind of framing in the future.

...not that I'm holding my breath. I would have expected that getting penalized by the US government for refusing to enable autonomous killbots and domestic surveillance would have already tempered Dario Amodei's nationalism somewhat, but it doesn't really seem to have.

[bambamramfan]

don't tell people the technology you are working on may have dangerous downsides and needs to be handled cautiously, because then it's your fault when corrupt strongmen and petty egos take you down to put you in your place.

no, i must be exaggerating--

anyway, continue with the victim blaming for acting honestly instead of defensively

[bambamramfan]

Weirdly, this whole thing reminds me of the OpenAI coup. Maybe in a way that will only make sense to me.

A Board was selected to be unremovable and in charge of moderating a potentially malicious, manipulative agent so it didn't get out of control. The unaccountable part was so the agent could not merely go around them, and the board was specifically selected for their rigor and principles, rather than political acumen.

Then the board said Sam Altman was a danger and fired him. They were not rapidly forthcoming with a reassuring explanation, while Sam's allies and financial dependents (Microsoft) raised hell about what a costly decision this was.

Rationalists at the time reacted by... mostly saying they couldn't make sense of why the Board did this. It was such a sloppy move and wasn't accompanied by the sort of full court press we expect of politicians. Because that is not what the Board was selected for. They were selected for being ideological trustworthy, and NOT smooth manipulators.

Sam won, and got rid of them, and given all the money involved that was probably fait accompli. But there was a significant absence of tech and thought leaders trying to say "this is exactly what we hired the Board to do and maybe we should trust them."

Anyway, years later when OpenAI's nonprofit governance is a flaccid joke, people realize "sama" really was a money-focused sociopath who doesn't care about AI Safety principles, and private reasoning from the Board has leaked out, and most of us have concluded they were right. But the only acknowledgement of that I see is bigtime rationalists saying "well why didn't the Board explain it to us better at the time." It's not their fault for being suckered by the smoother politician and all the financial interests, it's the fault of the institution you decided to distrust.

You see how that sounds like the people saying "well this is plainly abuse of power by the administration, but really let's talk about how Anthropic opened themselves to it."

[swagophile]

me (noob): I dont want to be a noob anymore. Just pwn me to death. I don't care. I'm sick of living this life. Everything is just too hard. I don't want to be noob

my hacker friend: but mori... you're not a noob.. i can see your status in game with my hack abilities.. mori.. you're pro

me: [tearing up] You don't mean that,

[memorydatas]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[memorydatas]

for context:

[dragonquestv]

[an-actual-lion-deactivated20200]

“Beep Beep Bitch, You’re Gay!”

[leolikesaccountability]

Updated the lesbian flag and added nonbinary, pan, ace, and aro for all your tacky LBGTQ+ barcode needs.

[non-binary-ary]

Hope yall  like my abomination

[thegrimmlovely]

That last one is fucking moving istg

[silverjirachi]

at last. the gaydar

[cargopantsman]

[anathemaegg]

[effeminate-wastrel-deactivated2]

The only pride flag I care about anymore

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[yuhi-san]

Thats the context for this meme???

[titenoute]

I feel like I've been robbed the whole time. This is magical.

[kstarlitchaotics]

I'm dying

[pilferedinstagram]

[jojo-the-dogg0]

Equiping an armor tutorial

i'll prob make more bc i love talking ab armors

[cathartidae]

oooh okay a human claiming an entire group of animals is useless. how novel.. and you think killing them all would do barely anything? that's so interesting! and you believe you're stating truth right? you're not a biologist either? damn... this... this may be a stroke of genius... you're so right... wow...

[cathartidae]

TWENTY MINUTES BABEY CAN WE HEAR IT FOR TWENTY MINUTES!!

[hawkpartys]

[hope-for-the-planet]

70% Drop in Levels of Forever Chemicals Observed in Seabird Eggs Tracks Regulatory Success

These pescatarian birds are directly exposed to PFAS contamination due to the island's position near the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

While continued vigilance a regulation is needed, this data indicates that regulations are working to reduce PFAS concentrations in marine ecosystems.

[sattarehi]

Yes!!!! I did a review of literature on PFASs in human drinking water about half a year ago, and there is a lot of really good progress! Please celebrate this, please don't let this solution be forgotten (at least so quickly) as the ozone layer or acid rain.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

Environmental problems CAN BE SOLVED.