Hey! Listen! Hey!

Just a big ol' nerd. she/her.

[huffylemon]

[dailycatsblog]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

no more historic events this decade that is ENOUGH, i’m putting my foot down

[alettertofutureme]

History is not done with us yet my friend

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I have received all manner of threat, up to and beyond “I will play a flute carved from your femur,” and yet this is the first time I’ve felt truly threatened

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i knew posting this in 2022 was risky but holy fucking shit

[quietwingsinthesky]

all the “peer pressure is bad” education we give kids is practically useless because all it cares about is telling them that Drugs Are Evil rather than the much more useful lesson of ‘the person who responds to you saying you don’t drink by telling you they’ll find a way to get you to is also going to be shitty about all your other boundaries’.

[quietwingsinthesky]

god forbid you teach kids that their consent should be respected rather than about the inherent immorality of all the sinful actions of their peers

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[the-murmuration-project]

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

[silvermoon424]

UNFATHOMABLY based hive mother. Let's pour one out for our fallen bee comrades.

[roguetelemetry]

bee ungovernable

[dogpuppy]

[squirrelly-13]

they got married btw

[visit-me-here-in-wonderland]

oh you’re not kidding

[ooo-silly-worms]

Pottery sounds terrifying to me. Every post I see is like "Here's this awesome art I made!! Pray for me that it survives The Kiln™ :')" I don't think I could cope with making art that could quite easily blow up and I have no way of controlling that. You guys are true heroes.

[claypigeonpottery]

@bazanite you are so correct

[disarmd]

i get the vibe that people are reading less fic these days. confirm/deny?

in terms of reading fanfiction in the last six+ months...

i have been reading less fic lately for various reasons

i have been reading less fic and i'll tell you right now it's because of AI

i would like to read more but i'm in a fic reading slump

i never read all that much fic (less than one story per week)

i almost never read fic (less than once a month)

i read the same amount of fic as ever

i have been reading more fic lately

nuance/bald/i'll tell you in comments

Remaining time: 3 days 18 hours

"because of AI" i mean because of the number of fics that are written using AI.

[bontxt-deactivated20151125]

how do draw good

fill 14 sketch book

bad stuff is good stuff bc you made stuff

do you like sparkle???? draw sparkle

draw what make your heart do the smiley emote

member to drink lotsa agua or else bad time

d ont stress friend all is well

your art is hot like potato crisps

don’t let anyone piss on your good mood amigo

if they do

eat

them

[consultingcriminal-deactivated2]

this fucking post

i finally found it

in the name of the Lord

[hotvampireadjacent]

[notahorseindisguise]

youd think a band named violent femmes would be made up of violent femmes. but it isnt. its dudes

[notahorseindisguise]

genuinely no mary... the australian dollar is not doing great right now

[notahorseindisguise]

i need to type with more of an accent

[notahorseindisguise]

youse may bloody reckon a band name of violent femmes'd be a buncha sheilas after a couple bundy cokes. but it aint. packa blokes.

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[sludgebones]

everyone in the comments like “its just focaccia” “he’s never seen someone bake focaccia before?” shut the fuck up

[voidingintotheshout]

And also, everyone has different experiences and an experience can be a person’s first time, even if it’s something you’ve seen over and over again. I was going on a hike in Central Jersey with a bunch of kids from Trenton, inner city. There were squirrels and birds singing. Typical suburban forest. It was a normal hike for me but this was the wilderness for them and they were excited and frightened because this was the furthest they had ever been from the city and they didn’t have any idea what a poisonous plant looked like or where snakes might be and it was all exciting and new, this suburban New Jersey forest. It’s really nice when you can just celebrate the exciting moment with a person without showing off how much of the world you have experienced.

[quasarkisses]

I’m always grateful I got to see this xkcd strip when I was young enough to change

[ducissatenebrarum]

Hieronymus Bosch

[archiveswizard]

He looks a bit different than I imagined.

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[thememedaddy]

[homunculus-argument]

If you're trying to tell someone that something they did inadvertedly hurt your feelings, and they treat this conversation like a debate where their goal is to successfully argue that they did nothing wrong, and that you have no right to feel upset, that's your cue that you should give up trying to have any kind of a real, genuine relationship with them. Everyone will sometimes end up doing something that you hadn't realised would upset someone you care about, you can't be constantly aware of every single thing at all times. But turning the following conversation into an argument of uncompromisingly justifying and defending their actions is a sign you shouldn't ignore.

They don't think that upsetting you is the problem. What they have a problem with is you thinking you deserve better than how they want to treat you.

[theonewhopoops]

While I ultimately agree so I'm reblogging, just adding an additional perspective of my own:

It might not be so malicious a motivation. Instead of having a problem with "you thinking you deserve better than how they want to treat you," it could be zero percent about you and 100% about them in their mind (even ifthey can'tconsciously express this). It could be that the problem they have with this situation is the idea that they're doing harm, ESPECIALLY the idea that they're doing harm when they think they aren't.

I've met plenty of people that fall into this alternative category, where they ONLY see how hard they're trying, how stressed they are, how "good" of a person they're striving to be (from their worldview), and then they're told that - no - in fact they are hurting someone. Which can sound like "you are wrong, you are bad, you do bad things, and this has always been true and will always be true" so they get defensive and reactive.

All that is to say, the end result is the same: they may debate and defend instead of purposefully listen to your needs. YOU don't have to be the one to try to walk them through "how to calmly listen to someone without becoming defensive" or "how to reasonably accept criticism and talk through interpersonal issues" either way.

[homunculus-argument]

It might seem callous, but I don't think it matters why someone is defensive about being allowed to do everything exactly their own way and will not consider doing anything different as an option. If someone starts telling you that doing things the way that upsets you is the only option they have, it's really irrelevant to you, personally, whether they do it because they have a traumatic childhood and too much on their plate and were never raised right, or whether they're just choosing to be a jerk.

If someone keeps shitting on your car windshield year round, and you're sick of scraping frozen shit off your windshield every single morning through the whole winter, it doesn't really matter how good of a reason they have to keep doing that. If you can't make them stop shitting on cars, the only thing you can do is make it clear they're gonna have to find someone else's car. If they don't want to do better, you can't change their behaviour. And if they truly cannot do better, you can't change their behaviour.