Procrastinations Abound

A collection of random items found while perusing through the infinite vastness of the interwebs while trying to avoid the abysmal monotony of my daily life. And some of my own artwork.

[secretie]

Hi from Minnesota. It’s scary here. It’s heartbreaking. It’s worse than you think. But we are fighting. The loon is our state bird, used as a symbol of Minnesota. It is quiet grace, a haunting call, the untamed wildness of the north. In Ojibwe teaching they represent diplomacy and leadership. In some myths loons carry the blind to bottom of lakes, and once returned to the surface, they can see. We have embodied all this and despite everything I feel a pride in my community. I made these pieces to show the solidarity I see and contribute to the fight- this is what the arts are for.  STORE - 𝐀𝐋𝐋 profit goes to MIRACMN, they are on the frontlines here fighting for immigrant rights, and Community Aid Network MN, a mutual aid network. My Instagram for updates.

Please keep your eyes on MN ❤️

[kasaneteto]

DO NOT CHECK UP ON THAT FRIEND YOU CUT OUT OF YOUR LIFE!!!! DO NOT CHECK UP ON YOUR EX!!!! DO NOT CHECK UP ON THAT OLD COWORKER YOU HATED!!!! IT WON’T HELP YOU!!!! CHOOSE YOURSELF!!!!

[ahedderick]

Out at 11 to keep the water trough from slushing up. This time I took Pity on Rosalie and put her coat on. K bought it in the fall, and I don't think she has ever worn it before. She was not thrilled.

She said, "I - can just stay on the porch? Right?"

As a matter of fact, no, Rosalie, you cannot.

I can't even.

She did eventually get the hang of moving in it, but continued jumping into the air and shaking vigorously, trying to get rid of it.

Meanwhile, Hero and the gang are just hanging out by the haybale. Enduring stoically.

The part where I had to climb the damned apple tree, in my winter layers and boots, to force the idiot chickens to go in their coop does not bear talking about. There was hostile language on both sides.

[ahedderick]

@zooarchaeologyatdinner I'm wheezing, coughing, laughing, wiping tears away. You simply MUST tell the rest of the story.

[zooarchaeologyatdinner]

😅 sometimes, one chooses to get err... a less modern breed of chicken. Like, say, Icelandics. And chooses to let broodies hatch out chicks because chicken is tasty, and hey, I got these birds in part because of their reliable brooding and mothering instincts.

Unfortunately this means that come mid to late summer, the cockerels are ready to strike out on their own ie. Stop sleeping with those silly grownups (alternate version as reported by the adult chickens: parents kick those absolute idiot teenagers out of the coop perches due to a serious case of Excessive Hormones and Unruly Behaviour) (a pattern that does seem to match with their jungle fowl ancestors)

Then, when one goes out to lock up the coop at night, one is faced with the tree nearest the coop being filled - up to a height of about 30' - with chickens who are convinced this is the Best and Only place to sleep. (To be clear there is significantly more indoor perch space than actually needed, they could and do all comfortably fit inside)

Choices at this point are:

a) feed the raccoons (not ideal on many levels including but not limited to that's *my* future dinner dangit!)

b) shake the tree (at best resulting in confused and irritated chickens landing on one's head, also not ideal)

c) get out the leaf blower because I have yet to meet a chicken that enjoys its butt fluff being suddenly blown backwards

So C it is. Which thankfully after a few days does result in being able to run the chickens out of the tree just by turning it on for a few seconds. They aren't stupid birds. But those first few days I do have to stand around under the tree (or on the coop roof) causally leafblowing my chickens.

It's the only reason we own a leaf blower.

[ahedderick]

I am ENTRANCED at the mental image. Thank you so much.

[yuumei-art]

In 2012 I painted the top image: Rise

In 2026 I am saddened to have to repaint this update: Fall

[valdrake]

It's so disheartening to see that things have not gotten better. Everything is getting worse.

[valdrake]

my first name is valerie and my last name is drake. i feel so represented

Hahaha, you're most welcome.

[ethuils]

celebrating mental health awareness month! 

↳ favourite games for wellness & coping

“gaming can foster health and well-being, enhance social connectedness and help you flourish through challenge, immersion and flow.” — checkpoint

free resources you can check out that combine gaming with mental health awareness (x, x)

[lifeisacorpseyoudrag]

[valdrake]

Well, I'm back here for a bit. I need somewhere to go where I feel a modicum of safety. Please tell me Tumblr is still an okay place to go on this hellscape.

[valdrake]

There are no words.

"End This Suffering - GA's Abortion Ban Forces Brain-Dead Pregnant Woman to Be Kept Alive"

This woman is dead. Her body is being kept alive because it was hosting a clump of cells considered to be a "person" due to the ridiculous heartbeat law regarding pregnancy.

Adriana Smith was 6 weeks pregnant when she suffered a medical emergency that left her brain dead. Let me put that into perspective for you: at six weeks, there is no fetus. It is a literal clump of cells and nerve endings. The heartbeat? It's not an actual heartbeat. What is being detected is the firing of electrical signals from a group of cells that will eventually become the "pacemaker" of the heart. There is no actual heart. There are no organs. There is no body to speak of. Just a clump of cells.

Adriana Smith's body has been kept alive for 15 weeks. The gestational age of what is now a fetus is approximately 21 weeks. A fetus is considered full term at 40 weeks but can survive outside of the mother as early as 37 weeks. This woman's body is serving as an incubator for a fetus that is already displaying signs of severe complications. The resulting infant may be born blind, brain damaged, or physically disabled.

This is outrageous. Tell me again how we're not heading straight into A Handmaid's Tale.

Please sign and share. This body deserves to be put to rest and the family deserves peace:

https://www.change.org/p/end-this-suffering-ga-s-abortion-ban-forces-brain-dead-pregnant-woman-to-be-kept-alive

[itscoldinwonderland]

Thinking about how every major city (except fort worth) in Texas is blue, votes democrat in every election, is majority liberal/left-leaning. It's driving me insane okay. The majority of Texans live in or around the major cities. Land does not vote.

75% of Texans live in BLUE!!!

This makes me want to put a toaster in the bath tub okay bye!!!

[itscoldinwonderland]

You guys don't get it, like if you're not from Texas you don't get it. Most people here seem to just wanna keep their guns and like not have to pay high taxes, but thats were their ""conservative "" views end. Texas is a minoriry-majority state. Dallas and Austin have some of the biggest LGBT populations in the US. To even call Texas a red state is CRAZY TO ME. ITS GERRYMANDERING!

[three--rings]

Every one of those empty red squares gets representation in the state legislature. Those people representing 50 people and some cows are proposing laws. (I say this as someone living with cows in my neighborhood). And even then the districts are gerrymandered to break up any blue areas. My college town used to have a dem rep till they gerrymandered us to add more cow territory.

My state senate district weaves around 18 counties, including some partial counties, from central texas all the way to the border hundreds of miles away to make sure the absolute cunt of a state GOP senator we have stays in power.

If people outside these states want to do something to help us and stop the march of fascism you should be pressuring the federal government to address gerrymandering and voting rights. This cannot be a states rights thing. it's a human rights issue.

[westiec]

Here's the state senate districts @three--rings is talking about:

[source: txdot.gov]

Lotta cow territory lumped in with bits of city there. It's not just the state lege though. For fun, here's what the US congressional districts look like:

[source: txdot.gov]

Might be even worse. Shout out to TX-10 in particular that dodges around the city of Austin to pick up all the rich neighborhoods around Lake Travis on the west side to go with all those red Brazos Valley counties.

Hey, I wonder how this district map looks if we color it by—

ah.

[source: NY Times article about the latest round of redistricting gerrymandering]

[three--rings]

My favorite gerrymandered Texas district is the one I used to live in, Houston's 18th. Represented by the legendary Sheila Jackson-Lee.

But look at this map.

It's the peachy thing. They literally just said "let's carve out all the black neighborhoods and also the gay ones and put them all together. Now both the 29th and the 7th are also democratic these days, but that's a recent development. (Okay the 29th has been dem controlled for a long time but the 7th only since 2019.)

[three--rings]

Somebody reblogged this two year old post and I got all heated about this again.

Friendly reminder they are in power cause they cheat. They are not a majority. And they're trying to fix every race. Don't give up. We have the numbers.

[sreegs]

One of the common mistakes I see for people relying on "AI" (LLMs and image generators) is that they think the AI they're interacting with is capable of thought and reason. It's not. This is why using AI to write essays or answer questions is a really bad idea because it's not doing so in any meaningful or thoughtful way. All it's doing is producing the statistically most likely expected output to the input.

This is why you can ask ChatGPT "is mayonnaise a palindrome?" and it will respond "No it's not." but then you ask "Are you sure? I think it is" and it will respond "Actually it is! Mayonnaise is spelled the same backward as it is forward"

All it's doing is trying to sound like it's providing a correct answer. It doesn't actually know what a palindrome is even if it has a function capable of checking for palindromes (it doesn't). It's not "Artificial Intelligence" by any meaning of the term, it's just called AI because that's a discipline of programming. It doesn't inherently mean it has intelligence.

So if you use an AI and expect it to make something that's been made with careful thought or consideration, you're gonna get fucked over. It's not even a quality issue. It just can't consistently produce things of value because there's no understanding there. It doesn't "know" because it can't "know".

[sreegs]

its been just over a year since i posted this and i still encounter people saying things like "i asked chatgpt and..." or "i made this with chatgpt and...". and these arent like teenagers or students they're adult professionals using this shit for their job. i dont know how people live like this

[sreegs]

I don't know how to make this any more clear but if you use ChatGPT to do work you're only hampering yourself.

If you stop using it (or Co-Pilot or any other bullshit AI helper) you will learn and grow more, develop new skills, and become a more valuable employee at work and/or do better at school. There's no shortcut to developing useful skills, you just gotta keep working on it.

[sreegs]

SURPRISE SURPRISE

Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”

Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use.

[oldshrewsburyian]

#it is easy to say this now but it was also incredibly easy to say this at the start and at every point along the way ( @qqueenofhades)

[valdrake]

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

[shockimage-moved]

hey if you’re a federal worker you may want to use a vpn and check to see if the “american accountability foundation” (elon) doxxed you. suggesting a vpn bc there’s an IP logger on the domain.

[shockimage-moved]

info includes black and white photos of targets, social media posts, and political donation history among other things. do not access the site from company devices or during work hours.

[shockimage-moved]

according to this NBC news article, “offenses” include things as minor as having your pronouns in your bio.

[basedandfatpilled-deactivated20]

Domestic incompetence is going to kill men

[kaiasky]

ok but the sight of that giant lint block does not make me want to clean out lint more. imagine how good that shit would feel to touch omg

[regexkind]

You can just gather that shit. And then if you're only drying cottons or something you can take it camping and use it as firestarter

[sufficientlylargen]

Some other things a person might not know, especially if nobody ever taught them because their parents assumed that men don't need to do house maintenance:

Washing machines have filters to catch large debris; you should check these periodically and remove anything stuck in them. If you don't, it affects the machine's efficiency and eventually can lead to the filter getting clogged and flooding your laundry space.

Washing machines also need to be cleaned from time to time, generally by running them on hot with nothing in them except cleaning chemicals (you can buy washing machine cleaner, or google it for various diy solutions that probably involve vinegar or bleach). If you don't they'll start growing mold, and then all your stuff will come out of the wash smelling bad.

Dishwashers also generally have filters to catch large chunks of food and whatnot. Boy howdy can they smell bad if you don't ever check them.

There are dishwasher disinfectants as well, or you can do things with vinegar; either way, it'll prevent mold buildup and also hopefully rinse away buildup from soaps and whatnot.

If you have a reusable water bottle, wash it weekly. Otherwise you're probably drinking mold, the effects of which can be widely variable but almost always bad.

Vacuum cleaners often need their filters cleaned or replaced. If you vacuum a room and it smells worse than it did before, you probably need to change the filter or the vacuum bag.

[scienceandstorytelling]

To clarify, the reason you have to clean the lint out is 1) it makes your clothes not dry well and 2) it fucking CATCHES FIRE

[fuck-u-maga]

[bogleech]

Why DOES this read as "communism" or "radical" to them.

[theconcealedweapon]

[bogleech]

I wish every ice agent, everyone relaying orders to them and all citizens who agreed with these decisions would get their throats ripped open by dogs.