Consistently, predictably, dependably ERRATIC

There's logic in here somewhere ...

[rhube]

I just remembered that this was a thing that was HILARIOUS in 2006 and apparently that was ten years ago now.

Old people: join with me in remembering how funny we found this on LiveJournal.

Young people: look at this lolrus, it’s so happy, it has a bucket.

And then they stealed away the bucket and we realised we had fucked up a perfectly good elephant seal and given it anxiety.

[pipistrellus]

listen this vintage meme is high quality and i will hear nothing said against it

[rhube]

20 years. I am not happy about this.

[demonicsymphony]

I’m delighted at the bucket reappearing but dismayed at the passage of time

[ineptshieldmaid]

All hail the bukkit.

[ngalitzine]

“Nineteen,” Ilya said at the same time Shane said, “Eighteen.”

Ilya shot him a curious look. “We were nineteen the first time we—”

“Oh,” Shane said. “I thought the question was the first time we felt, um, sparks.” His ears were bright red and Ilya wanted to bite them.

“Yes,” Ilya said. His voice has gone soft, but he didn’t care. “Eighteen then. That’s right.”

[doesnotloveyou]

Writing a fic set in the 80s–90s and remembering the comfort of turning the tv on in the middle of the night when you were too depressed to sleep or think and just watching whatever was on. Streaming sucks at replicating the noise of a box tv at low volume playing mind numbing content the moment you turn it on. Channel surfing was easy when you felt nothing inside and your head was groggy. You didn't have to choose from 1000 options with 1mil micro options, or answer surveys, or sign in, or hit "skip" when an algorithm chose another thing exactly like what you just barely watched. all the annoying little popups modern services harrass us with weren't there bc at 4am on a summer night you couldn't be bothered to click all that crap. You just turned on the noise box, laid on the couch, and fell back asleep.

and you didn't need an internet connection, and if you used antenna, you didn't even need to PAY for tv at ALL

[isquirtkerosine]

That elderly couple who volunteers at the soup kitchen after church on Sundays and attends every town hall meeting has done more community direct action than 99% of internet leftists 🤷🏽‍♀️

[isquirtkerosine]

#lol this post is stupid spup kitchens were created by the gov after they literally destroyed black radical organizers lives#and since when does going to a town hall meeting and working within the system help anybody in any significant way

100% agree homeless people should just starve and dumpster dive till le epic revolution happens!

and for sure local politics is so stupid it only handles dumb things like your schoolboard, judges, infrastructure, and rent laws! now tweets? Thats where the real work happens! 

[what-even-is-thiss]

Local activism stopped garbage collection from being privatized in my hometown and local activism is what defunds the police and keeps libraries and community gardens open and gets done most of the things people waiting around for a revolution claim they want. The weird former hippie suburban wine moms donating bags of quinoa chips and money to the food pantry I go to sometimes have done more for me materially then any defeatist political rant on tumblr ever has.

[iamnmbr3]

#local politics#so many people saying local elections won’t do anything for police brutality#when a lot of places in the US elect their sherrif!#and judges!#and all the other people in charge of the police!#but no I’m just a filthy moderate for suggesting we use EVERY tool at our disposal to improve the state of things (tags via @sofiadragon)

[melyzard]

My spouse goes to every single school meeting they host, and often is the only person to show up. When the school was debating putting The Ten Commandments in every school room, they held a meeting about it. Guess who was the only parent to be at that meeting? Guess who voted “no”? Guess what the school released as a memo after the meeting? (“Due to popular vote we will not be hanging religious writings in our school rooms.”) And this is just the only time I can prove his vote was the deciding factor in policy change, I know he’s probably swayed more changes (or prevented changes), like taking books from the library or imposing collective punishments on students or letting cops run around inside the building. Because he always shows up.

Go to your local meetings. Vote in the small elections. You will see direct, real change in your world.

[rob-by]

The pathologization of anger needs to be talked about. What do you mean my therapist is telling me that there’s something “chemically wrong” with me because I am still angry about my mom DYING OF COVID.

of course I’m still angry? My mom and 1.3 million other Americans are dead and you want me to shoot sunshine out of my ass about it?

[rob-by]

“But It’s been 3 years since she died, you have complex grief” yeah and she was on a ventilator for 11 days and she kept writing “I am scared” and “I don’t want to die” on a notepad over and over again. While you were still going out unmasked and unvaccinated and coughing all over each other, I was living a nightmare I couldn’t fucking wake up from. And every single day I’m reminded of it in the form of “haha wasn’t the pandemic such a wacky time haha” and “I’m not getting a booster you can’t make me 🤪 (nobody asked)” and “it’s not real they made the numbers up!!!”

“You’re not coping” Ok here’s the deal; I’ll stop feeling this anger when we have a national memorial (we don’t) or a cdc equipped to stop it from happening again (we don’t) or a population that takes a deadly disease seriously BEFORE it effects them personally (WE DON’T!)

until then, I’m pretty sure my anger is A COMPLETELY NORMAL HUMAN REACTION given the facts at hand

[systlin]

Did you hear the scientists have found a way to grow colored cotton? Thoughts?

It’s not a ‘scientists have found’ and much more ‘people have been already doing that for thousands of years and it’s just gaining more attention recently’

[beowulf22121]

Scientists didn’t know. It should be “Scientists just found out”

[systlin]

There’s actually been a load of vitriol leveled against folks who try to raise traditional colored cottons, because a lot of cotton growers don’t want the colored cottons cross-pollinating with their standard white cotton.

But anyway cotton can be grown in lovely natural shades of greens, reddish-brown ochres, and browns, all of which deepen with a good boil in water with a bit of washing soda thrown in.

The color obviously doesn’t fade or run, because it’s not dye. It’s the intrinsic color of the fiber itself.

[angry-cajun-lady]

I....I want clothes made out of those colors. They don't hurt my brain!

[systlin]

Aren’t they lovely?

I’m biased because I love the natural earth tones of many fibers, of course...browns, blacks, creams, copper-reds, ect...but I think they’re just gorgeous.

[systlin]

https://www.vreseis.com/shop

If anyone wants to know where you can get yarn or cotton like this!

[carolxdanvers]

Scientists did not "just find out", and this is more of the same anti intellectual bs as the post that goes around claiming archaeologists were too stupid to know that hair could be sewn for elaborate styles.

Anyway, scientists DID figure out how to grow colored cotton. They genetically engineered it to be bright fuckin pink, and they didn't "just find out" about it, they already knew which is literally what inspired them to attempt the thing they just accomplished. Begging y'all to stop pretending that scientists don't know things, don't have interests, don't grow up in farming communities or have family who taught them this. Scientists are people. Do you seriously think people who use genetic engineering to make eco-friendly pink cotton don't know anything about textiles?

Anyway. Bright pink cotton without dyes, because science is awesome

[gamerwoman3d]

Yes. CSIRO scientist Doctor Colleen MacMillan led the team that figured this out. They used tobacco plants for testing because of the genetic similarity. Basically if the tobacco leaves produced colors when injected with a bit of the experimental genetic material, the scientists on the team already understood that the color change would affect cotton bolls as well.

They grew bright red and bright yellow in a petri dish.

And yes, Doctor MacMillan knows lots of things. Here's a list of some of her publications.

@csirogram on Instagram

Additionally folks are researching how to create flame resistant cotton and black cotton. If a variety of black cotton becomes viable, it can stop a LOT of environmental damage caused by chemical manufacturing of black dye.

[nartoq]

THIS. Every damn botanist I know, including myself, is at the least tangentially interested in fiber arts and indigenous methods behind things like that. Scientists have hobbies and we're all goddamn nerds so a lot of those hobbies are more niche. The anti-intellectualism is insane. I swear half of y'all think scientists are all evil cackling old men devoted to holding up colonial power systems. The work done by Dr. MacMillan is crazy cool and should be celebrated

[homunculus-argument]

"But won't children be confused by all the LGBT-"

Yesterday I saw a mother with a baby carriage, being followed by a girl of about 4-6 years old on a bicycle. The kid started ringing her bike bell like RING RING RING RING RING RING RING, and the mother turned to look behind them to see whether they were being followed by a cyclist who desperately needs to pass them for the sake of everyone's safety.

And the little girl - who just rang the goddamn bell herself 5 seconds ago - also turned to look.

Kids are confused by everything at all times. They don't know jack shit. About anything.

[jumpingjacktrash]

i remember being like 8 or 9 and being told that my dad’s ex-wife was no longer diane and we were to address her as daniel now. my reaction: “ok.”

me and my brother later had a small discussion about whether that could happen randomly (conclusion: no, he probably had to file papers or something) and whether daniel should now be referred to as dad’s ex-husband (conclusion: yes but only to see the face he’ll make) but at no point did we find it like... alarming? the world is big and weird. we were used to it.

finding out a sorta-relative could just change genders off camera, as it were, was a whole lot less head-splodey than finding out there were no squirrels in australia!

[scattered-to-the-winds]

There’s no what

[ashfae]

"Won't they be confused by all the--" So what if they are? Life is often confusing. That's part of how we learn. Part of the job of an adult is to help confused kids learn and understand things. There's no obligation to protect the kids from the confusing things. Quite the reverse.

In my experience anyone using this BS excuse isn't worried about a child's potential confusion, but their own, which they don't want to admit to having.

[indieninja92]

theres no squirrels in australia???

[marleythegoldfish]

Aussie here, I DIDN'T KNOW SQUIRRELS WERE ACTUALLY REAL FOR THE FIRST EIGHT YEARS OF MY LIFE NO JOKE I THOUGHT THEY WERE A MYTHICAL ANIMAL LIKE UNICORNS

[alostpan]

WHAT??

[mariposakitten]

Also kids are far less likely to be confused by something the younger they learn about it. Kiddo had queer people in his life and casual references to queerness before he could even talk. It was never confusing for him. It was normal.

[galadriel1010]

Squirrels were an invasive species to Australia but they never managed to gain a foothold and were eradicated within a few years of their arrival.

[maimonideznuts]

I remember the Palm Squirrels in Perth... But I think they've been eradicated too.

Also my older sister thought Narwhals were mythical for an embarrassingly long time.

[pangur-and-grim]

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

[spirkkock]

my friend just had an art show and they were communicating with the gallerist over email. They could clearly tell that the gallerist was using AI to respond to their emails, but just rolled their eyes and moved on.

and then on the day of the show, my friend asks, "where is the camera I requested?"

gallerist: "you didn't request a camera"

my friend: "I did, and you confirmed that you would have one here."

gallerist: "that isn't true."

and then she proceeded to pull up the email thread, and my friend could see that every single email they had sent had been summarized by AI, and that the gallerist had then had AI write a response to them based on the AI summary, and that the AI had detected that they needed a camera, and confirmed on behalf of the gallerist that they would bring a camera, but because the gallerist had offloaded the work of actually reading and responding, she simply hadn't actually made any note of it herself, therefore didn't bring it, nor did she even know one was needed.

so my friend had done all of this communication about their needs and expectations to be able to make the show possible, and the person whose job it was to read that information and get it done had simply.... not read the information and not done it. because AI.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.

ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.

ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.

there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being a bitch, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.

it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.

also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.

if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.

*illustration by sillyalexnorris

[fictionalauthorityii]

Finding out AI companies are chewing through - literally, they’re pulping and burning them as they go - millions of books often including 1/1s and old texts that cannot be reprinted

Meanwhile there’s always some dipshit telling me AI is the future and we’ve got to just let companies erase human history and literature so they can train their abomination machines to pretend to think like people because a judge said it’s fine

[wageronancap]

[odessa-edmundson]

'Modern Poisoning Tools': AI Firms Buying and Destroying Thousands of Books To Feed AI Models

AI companies are buying and scanning printed books for training data, raising copyright and cultural preservation concerns as rare volumes a

[cynicaltechnophile]

There are no words I can put online to describe my fury. These people need to be hunted down and ended.

[kyraneko]

And meanwhile I have a wishlist of books that, on the rare occasion that I find one in the secondhand markets, costs $30-50 a copy (this will make that worse), and are they making the digitized copies available directly to readers in any way shape or form? I suspect not.

We've got an industrial-scale book-burning machine that also sucks up absurd amounts of water, power, and land, and a company pushing back on a state for banning the use-case of making people naked, and a company named fucking Palantir whose purpose is espionage all the way down . . .

. . . an author would be chided by their editor for making this reality too ham-handedly obvious.

I want off the Torment Nexus and I want off yesterday.

[helenvaughans]

📢📢📢

[mackdaddyofthecravate]

Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol 

[sazandorable]

a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:

NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.

Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.

YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.

DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.

SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.

As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.

(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)

[shatterpath]

bring the healthy fun back to fandom!

[ariaste]

PLEASE explain the Latin fuck words. for science

Okay so. The Romans think that sex doesn't count as real sex unless Someone Is Getting Penetrated By A Dick Or Dick-Adjacent Object. Very sort of dick-centric system.

So Latin has six words for "to fuck", divided into three pairs: one pair for each of the possible Holes (ass, mouth, pussy). In each pair there is a word for topping and a word for bottoming.

Most people who know a little about Latin fuck verbs know 'pedicare' and 'irrumare' from the first line of Catullus 16 (Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō), which is a poem about saying "absolutely shut the fuck up and piss all the way off" to fandom antis and purity police who are making repulsive accusations about you personally, based on things they're reading into your work from a bad-faith perspective. Catullus was so real for that and it's incredibly endearing to me that he was dealing with the same thing we are still dealing with. I got a hater in my askbox doing this about The Wisdom of Emperors just the other day, but I took the high road and, unlike Catullus, did not tell them "I will assfuck you and I will facefuck you" So here sort of a chart about the verbs: Topping | Bottoming Mouth: irrumare | fellare Ass: pedicare | cevere Cunt: futuere | crisare

Another fun fact related to the fuck verbs was that the Romans didn't think about sexual orientation in terms of who you're attracted to, they thought about it in terms of "which is your favorite hole and what do you like to do with it." So you'll get graffiti (ancient roman subtweeting) about things like "Marcus is a fututor [cunt-fucker] and a pedico [ass-fucker] but omg girlies I also heard he's a fellator [cock-sucker] 👀👀👀👀" In the modern day we'd just call him bisexual, but in Ancient Rome it is not enough to know if someone is bisexual (they think it's kind of perverted if a man only fucks women, like do you have some kind of freaky pussy fetish???? you've never once even fucked a twink??? dat's gay, bro. gay to not be bi), you also have to know if he's being bisexual in a respectable sort of way

You will notice that pussy-eating is not on this list, because those words do not mean "to fuck", they translate more directly to just "pussy-licking" (cunnilingus), and because the Romans are sexist as all hell and think that's gross and filthy anyway. This is not ONLY because of pussy terror, it's also that the mouth is the most sacred part of the body -- so eating pussy or sucking a dick is actually considered slightly more "shameful" than getting fucked in the ass. (Please note as well that the fuck verbs are gender neutral -- if you're a roman man and your girlfriend owns a strap-on, she can [pedicare] you. but be careful because your sworn enemy in the forum will have a fucking FIELD DAY if he hears about that and will write a Mean Poem about you or subtweet you on a public wall)

The moral of this story is that the Ancient Romans were absolutely *GAGGING* for social media (see Martial's Epigrams, aka My Best Tweets), and the second moral of this story is that if this was a fun post for you, you should look at my kickstarter for alllllll of this kind of nonsense in the form of A Fantasy Novel That's Pretending To Be An Academic Paper With A Fake Bibliography And Foonotes aka The Wisdom of Emperors. And please signal boost this so everyone can know about Latin Fuck Verbs and Roman Subtweeting, we've really learned so much here together

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I absolutely have ethical objections to the forms of AI that have come up in my workplace (climate, privacy, plagiarism, replicating biases in training data, becoming dependent on a subscription model) but there are situations where I could understand that trade-off if it was worthwhile.

like. I'm a biochemist who does lab work. I go through a LOT of single use plastic at work, because there are no other options. I do not enjoy this but I accept this as a cost because I think the work I do is valuable, and I try to design experiments thoughtfully in order to reduce waste.

but watching all of my co-workers start using copilot for things and get NOTICEABLY WORSE AT THEIR JOBS has just fucking radicalized me because what the hell guys. this thing is not helping you. you've replaced "I don't know the answer I should ask someone for help/read up on this/think it through" with "I asked chat" and now instead of helping you with your original question I am being forced to disprove something an LLM told you that doesn't make any sense if you think about it for two seconds but it *feels correct* so you didn't think about it for even one second. as a person who actually cares about the quality and integrity of my own work I am having to fend off a deluge of mediocre nonsense because it turns out everyone else is okay with mediocre nonsense as long as it's fast. I am going to start biting people.

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[meret118]

You can read about it here without a paywall.

Households exposed to COVID-19 now have an oral drug specifically cleared to prevent infection after contact with a sick person. The FDA listed Xocova, the brand name for ensitrelvir, as a 2026 novel drug approval for post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 following contact with an infected individual. The decision fills a gap that has persisted since the pandemic’s early years: until now, no oral antiviral carried an FDA-approved indication for prevention rather than treatment.

[black-quadrant]

ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long it’s been since I last said that, let alone messaged.

I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesn’t diminish my affection. My silence isn’t neglect or disinterest. It’s time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.

[mattymartin]

HUDSON WILLIAMS & CONNOR STORRIE ↳ Promo Poster Photoshoot for Heated Rivalry