you used to be able to go onto a tag after finishing a movie and see all sorts of gifsets. now you have to comb through reader insert fanfiction. we used to be a society
“They’re trying to convince people they can’t do the things they’ve been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.” We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, “that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won’t know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can’t do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won’t have to process grief, because you’ll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it’s going to destroy humans, long before there’s a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people.”
Justine Bateman on AI in this article from The Guardian
Holy **** oh right okay. So I was about to make a post about how using speech to text has already been a game changer for me but as you can see by the line of asterix at the start of this post the bloody thing auto censors swear words. (Yet bloody got through, ig Because it is a description and also British slang.). Hint: the word I was trying to say there starts with F and ends with K.
Oh and guess what else you can’t say you can’t say? **** [Nipples]. had to type that myself. penis is ok but **** [clitoris] isn’t, and all my attempts to say “clit” were Misunderstood, which may just be my speech but at this point I am not willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Vagina is OK too but every time I say it there is a moment when an * shows up on screen first before the full word does. this doesn’t happen when I say the word penis.
It is completely heinous. Anybody who needs speech to text is immediately forced to comply with the rules set out by people in a position of power and then enforced by a machine — a machine that is a very powerful accessibility tool. Imagine trying to dictate a letter to a doctor or fill in an E consult with speech to text, only to have words of your anatomy censored as if they are taboo. there is already far too much stigma around genital physical health — and note that I could say genital but can’t say **** [clitoris] — for it to be okay for these words to be censored.
And even if somebody just wants to swear In a message to their friends or write smut/**** [pornography], they should be able to. There is no justification for this feature. No reason for it to be default.
I’m trying to find a way around this. There is a settings icon on the little speech to text bar that comes up, but this only gives me options For the speech typing launcher, auto punctuation, and to set the default microphone. it’s making me extremely angry
When I was taking classes on becoming an interpreter, the first thing, literally the very first lesson, was that you accurately convey exactly what the client says, including tone. If my client called someone the equivalent of a “fucking cunt” in their own language, that was what had better come out of my mouth, without getting precious about not wanting to swear or use the c-word. The interpreter’s thoughts and opinions are supposed to be invisible.
Machine translation should be held to at LEAST the same minimum standard.
One of my fondest memories is of a sign language translator who was on stage translating speeches at a conservative political event. When a group of protestors started chanting and shouting very colorful obscenities at the speakers, he dutifully translated as much as he could for the audience. Thank you, random translator, I’m so glad everyone in the audience learned that the christian fundamentalist on stage was told to fuck a moldy pineapple. That was important. You understood that deaf people have a right to understand everything that’s going on, not just what your employer wanted them to hear.
Mastercard and visa have reported to a couple news outlets that they are currently being swamped with calls and complaints. Keep up the pressure and try to (politely) insist that you leave a complaint via phone instead of letting the rep direct you to emails. It’s way easier to be overwhelmed by a much smaller number of calls so each one counts for a bit more!
This blsky thread has scripts and hotlines so if you wanna reblog this version instead that would be appreciated!!
So Trump’s DOJ is suing the state of Washington because WA’s new mandated reporting law says that clergy (among many other professions) are legally obligated to report ongoing child abuse if they know about it. And the Christofascists in the Trump regime call that “anti-catholic”
finally listing some books on ebay so if there’s anything from fairyloot or illumicrate that you missed out on lmk and i might be able to sell it to you
If you are ever talking about someone in the context of human health and nutrition and they make a recommendation for fluoride-free toothpaste, you can dismiss their perspective on all other subjects relating to human health and nutrition.
If someone wants to improve human health but they’re willing to profit off of fluoride-free toothpaste, they’re either totally unaware of what they’re talking about and are therefore not worth listening to, or they’re a scammer and are therefore not worth listening to.
Lead Safe Mama sells a bunch of bullshit through Amazon affiliate links, but the easiest one to see right away as the sign of someone who cares more about their money than your health is fluoride-free toothpaste.
“Lead Safe Mama Says” is not a good reason to do anything except ignore whatever instructions follow.
There is definitely reason to be concerned about the lead concentrations in cassava flour, there are a few products that, if consumed daily, would put you at risk of having higher lead levels than recommended by the FDA.
But Lead Safe Mama doesn’t bother with the FDA, the difference between the presence of lead and exposure risk, or the way that lead is actually tracked by people who are looking to prevent heavy metal poisoning.
Lead Safe Mama says “there is no safe level of lead according to the WHO.” What the WHO means when they say that is is that there is no known safe level of lead in your bloodstream. What LFM means when she says that is “all lead is scary and coming to turn your children into autism zombies.”
Lead Safe Mama was also the one who raised a huge stink about lead in Stanley cups and other thermoses a couple of years ago. There is lead in some of those products - it’s present in the solder used to seal things and isn’t bioavailable. Lead Safe Mama was also the one who was scaremongering about vintage plates. She tests for lead in paint using dubious techniques then over-states the risk of exposure and possible outcomes from exposure. There was a whole tumblr shitpost that went viral about it.
There’s a similar post by the same blogger circulating about this Consumer Report’s survey of lead in cassava flour that says that Bob’s Red Mill is showing lead levels that is 2343% higher than the Consumer Reports recommended .5 micrograms per adult per day (that .5 microgram number is itself modeled on California Prop 65 standards).
So that’s got to be a ton, right, like a crazy amount of lead, right?
ALT
Nope. It’s 11.715 micrograms.
That is below the 12.5 microgram per day reference value set by the FDA for people who are pregnant or could become pregnant, but definitely higher than the 3microgram per day value set for children. Probably your child should not consume a cup of cassava flour from Bob’s Red Mill per day.
One point I’m making here is that actually Bob’s Red Mill and Pamela’s are actually probably fine with their CA65 warning labels - there’s not an absurd risk of high blood lead levels from eating their cassava products.
The other point I’m making here is get this fucking autism mom and her bullshit bad science and her child chelation recommendations and her fluoride free toothpaste off my dash.
one thing about americans is that they know how to make a fucking milkshake
i hate the stupid milk consistency shit you get here like if you give me a milkshake it better be rock fucking solid. i want that thang thick like concrete. it should piss me off trying to drink it through a straw. i should have to wait for it to thaw
Americans are so good at making Beverage. One of our Foundational Moments was actually a party involving Making Beverage. Google “Boston Tea Party” for more
My family had an NES when I was growing up and my dad liked it too. We’d go to thrift stores and grab random cartridges some weekends. One of the games was called Lolo and it was like 99 floors. You were a little blue guy, Lolo. Utterly harmless and trying to navigate the many traps and trials of the tower.
As a family we’d been working through the levels, slowly ascending the tower together and every so often the game would give a code to skip to an upper floor and lock in our progress.
One day it was just my dad and I at home. I was in trouble for some childish misdeed and supposed to be staying in my room, but my dad was playing Lolo so I snuck out of my room to watch. I moved soundlessly over the squeaky wooden hallway and posted to behind the couch where I could still see the TV. We’d been stuck on a specific floor and we knew it was the one that would drop a code so we could skip back to this level. He was at it for a while.
I watched him do a risky maneuver, thinking to myself that it was a pretty ballsy strategy as he only had one life left.
But to our mutual surprise it worked; he succeeded in clearing the floor. In his euphoria he jumped up and whooped, running to my room, so full of joy he needed to share the moment with me. I froze and watched him run down the hall. He looked into my room then looked around in puzzlement, finally spotting me behind the couch.
We stared at each other. I waited to see if I was in more trouble but instead he exclaimed, “You saw me! I did it!”
I jumped up to celebrate with him and we recommenced playing together, excited to see the new level he’d revealed. My earlier misdeed and the sin of sneaking away from the first punishment were both washed away in jubilation. He was just too happy he’d been witnessed.
Happy Father’s Day to the time I didn’t get in trouble cause I saw my dad do some cool video game shit.
It is very revealing when sex-negative Puritans accuse a person of pedophilia simply for dating a person who is short, or who looks vaguely young… they conceive of the problem being the wrong kind of attraction, rather than the exploitation of power.
and once you believe attraction itself can be inherently damaging, it is not a leap to claim that a person cannot ever fantasize or masturbate a friend without their consent, for example, or even just that being openly gay is child abuse/grooming. it is a reactionary position. but you see lots of queer people believing in some form of it.
I saw like five minutes of the “liking short women means you have unconscious pedophilia to unpack!!!” thing, and my Hobbit Filipino ass was like “okay, white women seem to have heard about Asian women’s issues with getting fetishized for being short and young-looking… but they sure have missed a LOT of other stuff.”
The racism and ableism undergirding these takes are just, unreal. If you’re attracted to adult Asian women or anyone under 5'4’’ you’re a goddamned pedophile predator and women who belong to those categories never get to enjoy being desired or loved
I’m 5’ and transmasc with, until the T, almost non-existent body hair and a when I was younger, a baby kitten face. I passed as high school age until almost 30. I know this because I used to pass the high school during my daily walks and got told by staff to get back inside multiple times, once kind of scarily insistently at close range. I was 27. I looked underage.
When people start in on that shit, I see red. How DARE you imply that I am too much like a child to have a partner. And these people are queer and ostensibly feminist a lot of the time.
What the fuck kind of “feminism” or “protecting women” tells women, which is what I was for most of my life, that we are dangerously like children because of things about our bodies that we cannot control, ever, not in our whole lives, change? It’s disgusting. My boyfriend, my ex, all the people I have slept with, have been fucking normal. Like, do they think I’m too hapless and immature to be allowed to choose a partner who isn’t a creep?! That my judgment must be that of a child?
If you have fallen into this mindset, get out of it. You are hurting people in the exact ways you claim to hate.
The winners of the 2025 Colorado Book Awards were announced on July 26. Awards are presented in 16 categories by Colorado Humanities to celebrate the accomplishments of Colorado’s outstanding authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers. The complete list is at the link. The … Continue reading →
[video description: two peachicks stand side by side in a white tub. The camera person very seriously asks “are you guys ready for Roach Time?” while the babies whine pathetically and stand up tall begging. A small cascade of roach nymphs rains into the tub and both babies immediately whip around to begin horfing them down as fast as birdly possible in dead vocal silence. Their beaks make very loud tapping noises as they trip over each other to get the roaches faster. Once the roaches are gone, the camera zooms in on the female peachick, whose throat is distended with roach nymphs she is trying to choke down by making horrible raspy slurping noises and motions with her face, because she is full of only two things, roaches and hubris. There is one whiny peep from off screen and the camera cuts out mid horf. /Description]
Took my tiny child with me to the Halloween store. Walked in and immediately realized it would be a terrible mistake.
They had those jumpscare machine things everywhere, lots of spooky noise machines, scary looking animatronic things, crazy decorations, just the whole 9 yards and then some. I immediately went to turn around and leave when I heard a noise coming from my arms.
My one year old child who gets scared if we cough…. was laughing.
She makes this precious “eee!” sound and starts vibrating when she sees something she really likes, usually an animal or a balloon, and she points right at the big zombie thing by the door and does that. I carry her in past a huge 10 ft tall Pennywise inflatable, and she smacks me to tell me to stop so she can look. She ponders him for a moment, and his glowing light-up eyes, then points at his hand and shouts “BEEM!” Which is her word for “balloon.” She made us stand there under Pennywise for at least 3 minutes, which is a really long time for a one-year-old.
Then, she begs to get down, so I let her loose and she just books it all over the store. Finds the creepy demonic looking babies and shouts “BABY!” then gets this confused look on her face and tries to wipe the “dirt” off their faces. Decides it’s not worth it, goes and picks up a severed hand decoration, hands it to me and says “hand.” Yes, my dear, it is a hand. And yes, that severed foot has “toes,” you’re very right.
Finds the wigs, runs down the aisle shouting “hair! hair!” and grabbing her own sparse little headfuzz so hard I think she’s going to rip it all out. Then she found the speaker in the wall that was blaring Monster Mash and she demanded I pick her up so we could “DANSSSE”. But she got distracted by the big spider decorations, which she christened as dogs by running toward them and barking.
She ran up and down the aisles of costumes touching the fabric and making her little “tss tss tss” giggle that she does when she’s having Much Too Good a Time. Every so often she’d stop, look back to make sure I was there, and point at something and vibrate with her aggressive “EEEE!”
A man turned a corner wearing one of the creepy latex masks. He immediately started apologizing to me, saying “I’m so sorry, I’m looking for my friend, I don’t want to scare her.” Meanwhile my child is standing there looking up at him with the most confused look on her face. Not scared, just confused, like he is so dumb and she can’t figure out why he would want to make that stupid face for so long. But he rounds another corner all hunched over, she flaps her arms and sighs, and takes off to go scream at the creepy lawn decorations.
When it was time to go, nothing could convince her to come to me willingly, so I had to promise her one last look at the balloon man while I picked her up against her will. Pennywise placated her, and we left the store with a smile on her chubby little cheeks. She demanded we wait and watch the big inflatable-flailing-arm-tube-man out front, the one that was bright orange and had a jack-o-lantern face, and she bounced and wiggled and danced in my arms despite its fan being louder than the loud motorcycles that scare her on our walks. She waved bye-bye to it as we left for the car.
Basically, that was the cutest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life, and it’s so crazy how so many things are culturally taught and kids are just… immune to that. All she saw was bright colors and things she recognized and could name, in a place she could explore and touch. She has no concept of clowns being scary or zombies being A Thing or what constitutes “creepy” and “spooky” and “gross.” To her, a severed arm with gore hanging out the end doesn’t represent pain or violence, it’s just “arm,” and it’s got some weird stuff on the end that’s funny colors. They’re just things, there’s no context for it.
The world is weird and beautiful and it’s so cool to see it through the eyes of someone who is so New to this planet and hasn’t been influenced by society and culture yet.
Four finalists have been selected for the 2025 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. They are: The website discusses each in detail under the “Finalists” tab on 2025 Award page. The winner of the 2025 Award will be announced on Wednesday, … Continue reading →
(1) DEATH DOES NOT RIDE A CAMEL. Not in this book, anyway. Christopher Lockett’s “Discworld Reread #6: Pyramids” leads another excursion into the genius of Terry Pratchett. …Pyramids is also, to my mind, one of the funniest of the Discworld novels. … Continue reading →
posted by fauxklore at 08:11pm on 26/07/2025 under meme
1. Orange juice or apple juice? Actually, I prefer cranberry juice to either of those.
2. When you look at an elderly person's hands what do you see? Looking at my hands, I see some wrinkles.
3. Have you ever bought shoes online? Did they fit? I am a big fan of Hot Chocolate Designs and have bought them online several times. Their sizing is consistent so I know they’ll fit.
4. What did you eat as a child that you can't stand now as an adult? I developed an aversion to certain textures (specifically mushy foods) as I grew up. As a child, I ate bananas in sour cream, applesauce, and soft cooked eggs, none of which I eat now.
5. Describe your typical day, from wake to sleep. All of this assumes that I am home, not traveling. I typically wake up somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning and do puzzles on-line for a while. I eat breakfast around 7 a.m., then read for a while and go back to sleep for a few hours. If the weather is decent out, I go out for a walk. I try to get through various chores, though my to-do list is generally several pages long. I eat dinner about 7 p.m. I often talk on the phone with one of my friends. I spend too much time on-line. Some evenings I go out to some sort of performance (or go to one on-line) or play games with friends. I typically go to bed about 10:00 p.m. and I pretty much always read for a while before that.
Of course, if I’m traveling, then I’m generally sightseeing during the day.
6. What if your life had been harder or easier? How do you think you'd be different? I think my life has been relatively easy, though there were difficult times, like grad school. I’ve generally been able to pull myself together and fight my way through the challenges. So I don’t think I’d be very different if my life had been harder or easier.
7. What did you want to be when you grew up? It varied from year to year. At various times, I wanted to be an astronaut, a chemist (specifically Marie Curie), a race car driver, an actress, and the first woman to pitch for the New York Mets.
8. What would it be like to be in a tornado? I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.
9. What would you do if you woke up one morning with a tail? I think that depends on what sort of tail. A cute little puffy bunny tail wouldn’t be very intrusive, but a long prehensile monkey-ish tail would make it challenging to adjust clothes to fit.
10. What yes or no questions have you ever decided by flipping a coin? I don’t think I’ve ever decided anything by flipping a coin.
11. You are given 24 hours to do whatever you would like, money no object. What do you do and why? I’d travel somewhere. Maybe take the United Island Hopper through the South Pacific. The catch is that 24 hours is not really long enough for most places I want to go.
12. If you had to choose between having a personal chef, a housekeeper, or a personal trainer, which would you pick and why? I’d definitely pick a housekeeper, since cleaning is something I generally find unpleasant to do.
13. If you were in a band, what instrument would you be playing? Maybe an oboe.
14. Describe what you hear when you hear nothing. I am rather prone to musical earworms, but that doesn’t really qualify as hearing nothing.
15. If you saw an alien, what would you do? Probably scream. Then I’d conclude that I was hallucinating.
16. Tell about a time when someone made you feel welcomed or accepted. What did they do and how did it make you feel? Not long after I first got involved in storytelling, I went to a weekend retreat. The weather was terrible and the drive took ages. But when I arrived, I was immediately greeted by someone I had met at the storytelling group I had started going to and she welcomed me enthusiastically. And she is still one of my close friends.
17. What is your least favorite chore and why? Nature abhors a vacuum and so do I.
18. Describe a fair, parade, or festival you have attended. I’ve gone to lots of crafts fairs and folk festivals. I always enjoy seeing creativity on display. One particularly memorable event was a Celtic music festival I went to in northern California with two of my friends. It was the first time I heard the band Old Blind Dogs and they were having a terrible time with their instruments in the heat. But it was still a great weekend, largely because of the company.
19. Have you, or your family, ever been affected by war? Describe how. My father and grandfather were Holocaust survivors and lost most of their family.
20. Tell what you like about one of your hobbies. I like knitting and crocheting because I can make beautiful things to wear or to keep myself warm.
21. Tell a story that you have had with one of your aunts or uncles (or some other family member) When I was growing up, I really wanted a chemistry set. My great-aunt Bernice bought me a “make your own perfume” kit as what she thought was a more suitable feminine alternative.
22. Tell about something that you and your siblings used to do together. We explored the area we lived in, either on foot or by bicycle. Back at home, we played board games.
23. What is something you liked about your childhood? My family listened to music together a lot. Dad would bring home the latest Broadway cast albums or comedy records. We also sang along with my Mom playing the guitar.
24. If you had the option to know the day and time of your death, would you want to know? There’s a part of me that would want to know, mostly so I’d know what annoying chores I could just stop doing. And it would be nice to be able to bid a proper good-bye to various people in my life.
25. What rituals do you have or hold? I always put my clean laundry away in a particular order - linens first, then pants and skirts, then tops, then socks, then underwear.
26. Should there be a dress code in places such as school, restaurants, and places of business? Why or why not? I think there should be guidelines in certain places so that people can conform to expectations, which makes everyone feel more comfortable.
27. What would happen if everyone wore the same clothes? It would make choosing what to wear far easier, but it would get pretty boring.
28. List your favorite cozy fall activities and why they bring you joy. I like walking in woods full of fall color, then coming in and drinking hot cider by a fireplace.
29. Name 3 things you love about your job. I’m retired now, but when I was working three things I liked were: 1) I had a lot of flexibility and variety in what I did from day to day, 2) I worked with some people who I could bounce ideas off of, which often helped me to think through how to approach a problem, and 3) I earned a good salary and benefits.
30. What is something that you are looking forward to doing today? It’s a bit late in the day for looking forward to doing something. But I would like to make a dent in the stack of travel brochures I’ve accumulated.
31. How do you express love for someone? If you’re someone I love, I’m pretty sure I can make you know that. For one thing, I give good hugs.
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ALT
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