this is a legitimate problem in robotics.
like, if you're a bomb disposal guy and your team has a cool bomb-disposal robot which you've given a cutesy name to, you may hesitate to put that robot in harm's way, which is NOT OPTIMAL in the bomb-disposing field.
it also doesn't help if you hold funerals for the robots after they get exploded (this happens pretty regularly).
anyway nobody has worked out how to stop humans from pack-bonding with literally inanimate objects and they probably never will. (like even knowing it's a problem, I *still* think those EOD robots deserve funerals).
In 2007, the US military rejected a multi-limbed anti-mine robot because it's demise was too inhumane.
oh perfect, this is EXACTLY what I was talking about
Scientists in films: this alien/AI is not human and therefore undeserving of any kindness or sympathy
Scientists irl: This is my friend Robob he's five feet long, has ten legs and was built to explode mines and if anybody hurts him I will tear apart time and space to get revenge
Ah, I remember seeing a video about Mark Tilden back in the day: he was demonstrating his technique for building "BEAM robotics" in a way that allowed them to adapt to changes to their physical configuration. I remember quite distinctly him being very proud of what was basically a robotic stickbug, and then demonstrating how it continued to operate as he mutilated it beyond repair relative to previous sorts of robots, and I felt that he was being extremely cruel to it.
I guess I wasn't the only one.
Shout out to anyone that ever made a character that’s a ‘Secret Government experiment’ that escapes the lab and is now wanted and misunderstood. That’s top tier character design, thank you.
Shamelessly poaching someone elses idea, social media poll but the options arent solely geared 2wards 15 year olds
Reblog 4 a bigger sample size dadada you know how it is w polls
my pain scale invention. it goes from 0-16. you fill it out like this:
i made this because i find pain to be a multifaceted thing that influences me in different ways. i can accomplish lots of small tasks while in pain but that doesnt mean i can move around or even think clearly. its name is the goldstein expanded pain index or gepi. you can use it if you want. or not.
God, remember when we all learned what CDDB was and the first programs to auto-add that data became available???
Remember when Phish did Rodeohead and System of a Down did The Legend?
So like, the Reddit strike going on right now, yeah? I've been seeing a lot of people comment on how they appreciate the protest and then go on to say that this has the notable downside of them constantly looking up questions and not being able to easily find the answers because all of the easily-findable answers are exclusively on Reddit. I am not sure if most of the people making this observation are within the line of thought of "man, maybe this protest isn't such a good idea after all" or "man, it really sucks that we've let the internet get so consolidated," and I'm really hoping its the latter.
Like, all of this? This right here? Reddit making a shitty, anti-consumer grab for money and control over how people are allowed to access the information on their servers, and the website going dark in protest causing tons of people to not be able to access important information? This is exactly what people mean when they say that it's bad that the internet has shrunk down so much and is mostly comprised of, like, 10 websites. It's a fucking problem that one company making one bad decision and causing their website to crash and burn can jeopardize so much of humanity's cumulative information.
This two-day glimpse into the internet without Reddit is the warning shot. Imagine what will happen if Reddit actually goes down for good for one reason or another one day. Imagine what will happen if/when Discord or Fandom bites the dust, or gets rendered practically-unusable without paying an ever-increasing premium because they're owned by blood-sucking corporate leeches.
Another big thing is Twitter clamping down really hard on your ability to DM people if you don't have Twitter Blue. If this goes through, it'll put a ton of artists and sex workers who rely on Twitter DMs for their business operation into a shitty situation. Now, obviously, it's not gonna be the end of the world for them, but once again, it feels like a warning shot to me. Twitter is a sinking ship, and unless something changes and it starts to course-correct, I worry that it'll go under and all of the creators who rely on it will suddenly be in an extremely precarious situation.
These are the sorts of things that we, as the users of the internet, need to seriously think about as time goes on, and if we don't find an adequate answer sooner, we're going to pay for it later. I still hold that the best solution is to start making and using more individual, niche websites. Things like Twitter, Reddit, Discord, etc. have their place, of course, but I seriously think a lot was lost through the death of things like individual forums and the existence of many different wiki-hosting sites.
We need a concerted effort, not just on the side of larger creators, but on the users themselves, to stop exclusively using these larger websites and support the creation and growth of smaller, more niche websites, and prevent a catastrophe before it actually happens. I simply hope that people with larger platforms than my own pick up on all this and start talking about it and swaying people to act sooner rather than later. I know it's possible to correct the problem of the mysteriously tiny internet before a modern Library of Alexandria moment happens, I just don't know if that correction will actually happen in time.
I want people to also realize that the Internet of the 80s and 90s was actually better about a lot of these things in some way. People are talking about doing federated/distributed versions of Reddit, and trying to come up with all sorts of complicated protocols for that, when back in the day we already had an Internet service for this, called NNTP (aka Usenet), where it was standard for different ISPs to run their own Usenet nodes and for people to access Usenet through it. And there were dozens of different clients with different accessibility concerns and user interfaces and plugins and so on.
And then people might be tempted to say, well hey, if Twitter DMs are becoming useless, let's make a new DM-based service that lets people send each other messages and negotiate things and send sketches and progress images back and forth and so on, and like, my dude, you are reinventing email.
The web-ification of the Internet has been Not Great, and while Usenet and email both have their problems (especially where spam is concerned) they were already distributed/federated protocols that allowed people to do all sorts of things, decades ago, better than what we're trying to replace today!
just saw someone advocating for ppl going off their meds so they aren’t reliant on “big pharma” and I’m like. what disease do you have that spontaneously treats itself the moment you feel morally superior to others? I’m dying to know
disabled people relying on a medical system that’s inherently unethical and capitalist and cruel is not an active choice we make by taking each breath
other disabled people deserve to live and they deserve the meds they need to be comfortable and alive, even if those meds patents are currently owned by monstrous billionaires
STANCE (Seattle Trans And Nonbinary Choral Ensemble) Inaugural Concert!
Seattle-area folks! The trans choir I sing in, STANCE, is putting on our FIRST EVER SEASON CONCERT this weekend! Come and hear us pour our trans joy and our trans defiance into our music.
Come see us at either of our performances at Rainier Beach Presbyterian:
- Friday, June 16 at 7 pm
- Saturday, June 17 at 4 pm
And if you have trans friends in Seattle, please, let them know!
check out my new DAW I'm gonna be cranking out tunes sometime this may
digital alligator workstation
how to speedrun getting banned from GrubHub and maybe getting a visit from the police
This is your reminder that a lot of public libraries actually have little summer reading programs for kids AND adults!
We even have PRIZES for when you finish filling up your sheet with stickers!
Support your local library. There may even be a sticker for you at the end 🌟
yes but do I get a free personal pan pizza and a party for the whole classroom?
i wanna eat taco bell box meals with midna...
it did not need context but the context did improve the post
there are reputable dealers of actual ready-to-use feminizing HRT that have been collectively verified to be genuine and safe. the risks in most places, legally and medically, of buying from them are very low. supplements are no replacement for actual hormone replacement therapy and anything claiming to be is snake oil. buying the raw active ingredients to combine at home is taking an unnecessary risk with your health if you lack the appropriate skills and make a mistake. don't waste your money and don't risk your health when there exists a safe option that actually works.
I read the first two acts of Miri and now I'm watching it, I'm not much of a Trek person and TNG when I am, but what the fuck (fond)
Classic Star Trek has some real banger episodes. Also some real head-banger episodes. But TOS is very much worth a watch if you haven’t seen much of it.
The first season is especially interesting because they were still trying to figure out how the show worked and it was more of an anthology series which couldn’t decide whether it was a Cowboy Western in Space or if it was philosophical thought experiments on different concepts like “what if silicon-based life is real and we just aren’t recognizing it.”
Even the episodes which have become Incredibly Memed were really amazing for the time and still worth a watch. Like, people only remember Arena for the big battle scene with the goofy rubber lizard suit, but the episode as a whole is actually really fucking amazing and speaks to issues of colonialism and intentional coexistence (and then the writers of Strange New Worlds completely failed to understand that episode but that’s a whole Rant).
Anyway, Star Trek TOS fills a similar space in my heart and mind as the original Twilight Zone: really good show with some great ideas, absolutely amazing writing (mostly, although there’s a few stinkers), and has been completely misremembered as meme fodder in the modern era.
(Which is to say, also watch Twilight Zone! A lot of it holds up REALLY WELL!)
I LOVE Twilight Zone, I think there are a few episodes I haven't seen yet but that's because...I don't want to *finish* Twilight Zone! I had multiple books of the original stories growing up, just. God, what a show. Mom grew up with it and would always comment that all the girls liked Rod Serling, he was hot and he smoked! A truth that stands today, except you don't have to be a girl to do it!
(don't smoke it's terrible for you)
Mom also watched a lot of TNG and I would be in the room reading a book or playing Game Boy, and while the politics couldn't keep my attention in the single-digit ages, I remember liking the bits I looked up for more and more as I got older. I mainly loved Geordi because he was Levar Burton, and Levar Burton was my reading buddy! I would pretend to be him sometimes, I got a plastic visor somewhere...I remember asking Mom what Geordi's eyes looked like and she didn't know. The episode where he takes the visor off was VERY mindblowing to me.
TOS is instantly grabbing me now that I'm older and have more patience for human beings in media (it was so, so hard to read facial cues rippp). Miri is an *incredible* concept episode! Weird blue plague, alternate timeline, sci-fi aging, reasonable semiotics for development (or, uh, undevelopment) of an isolated child-tribe that harkens to the end of Threads, and ofc this scene:
In Twilight Zone, it would have ended around 3:05, with the kids having closed in. It's a *good* life.
I love that as-is, Kirk manages to work out...eventually...that they are literal children and he can literally walk away from them. I don't know why this didn't occur to him BEFORE bon-bonk on the head, but I have been led to understand Kirk Is Like That.
I'd totally take recs! I do prefer exploration and what-ifs to such as politics, but Arena can be next on the list 8D Thanks Fluffs!
Aside: I was originally laughing because they had Miri sharpening pencils because lol wtf how random and then realized--holy shit, no, they *need pencils and paper*, they are *doing math*. Blew my damned mind. I fucking adore it, they predicted the smartphone with comms in 1966 as something we were gonna work toward and conquer, but they couldn't anticipate that pencils and graph paper could ever be outdated--and technically, they aren't. They never will be!
i can't think of a single episode of TOS which isn't worth watching for some reason, either because it was really good, or had a really good idea, or was just like, so terribly awful that it wraps around to good.
I feel like season 1 is where the show was trying to find its footing, season 2 is where you get all of the classic This Is Star Trek episodes that everyone thinks of, and season 3 is where they were desperate to stay on the air and had basically No Budget so there's some absolutely brilliant episodes where they did more with less (Tholian Web, The Empath), and some extreme stinkers where they did less with less (Spock's Brain, The Savage Curtain), with no middle ground.
imagine being the first amish bitch in your village to like get your body done like ass shots titties done and like beat face contoured… and then you walked into like the saloon or whatever amish people have and everyone dropped their irish fiddles and was shookedt? like everyone churning butter was just in shock and you walked across the artisanal wood floors in your wantmylook.com thigh high lace up heeled boots like your life depended on it… yes god
That'd be one heck of a way to spend one's Rumspringa.