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@scientiststhesis-at-pillowfort / scientiststhesis-at-pillowfort.tumblr.com

Find me at https://www.pillowfort.io/pedro

better executive function doesn’t feel like having more willpower it just feels like i… do the thing, without really thinking about it. “like, why would you not?”

but then on my higher-functioning days this means my brain keeps returning an error sensation of “wasn’t… wasn’t there some reason i needed to sit down for at least an hour or two before doing this…? i’m DEFINITELY forgetting something…”

what she says: i’m not here for you
what she means: congratulations. you have invented a new kind of stupid. a damage you can never undo, kinda stupid. and open all the cages in the zoo, kinda stupid. truly, you didn’t think this through? let’s review. you took a rumor a few maybe two people knew and refuted it by sharing and affair of which no one has accused you. i begged you to take a break you refused to. so scared of what your enemies will do to you, you’re the only enemy you ever seem to lose to. you know why jefferson can do what he wants? he doesn’t dignify schoolyard taunts with a response. so yeah, congratulations.

dps: THE TANK IS DYING.

me, a veteran healer:

dps: THE TANK IS DYING

me, a veteran tank:

tank: let me die

me, a veteran dps:

healer: the dps are dead and I’m not raising them again

me, a veteran tank:

Healers and Tanks: Dead

Boss: Still alive

Me, a Veteran DPS:

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Healers: Left

Tank: About to die

Me, an Anxious DPS with vanish still on cd:

image
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Tank: Dead Healers: Dead Me and one other DPS left fighting the boss that has 3% health left:

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Tiers of fanfic accessibility:

1. Written for general audiences

2. Presumes familiarity with the source material’s major characters and the broad outlines of its premise

3. Presumes familiarity with the events of individual episodes/chapters of the source material

4. Presumes familiarity with a particular fandom AU

5. Presumes familiarity with a specific headcanon, joke or meme known only to those who’ve been following the author’s blog since 2012

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(This isn’t a joke or a callout post - at least, not entirely. I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong to write anything above a 2 or a 3, but it does pay to be aware of what tier you’re on. There’s a big difference between intentionally writing for a particular audience, and unwittingly limiting your readership because you don’t have a clear notion of what you’re demanding of them.)

tier 6: presumes familiarity with a headcanon or worldbuilding quirk that you would pretty much have to have been lurking the author’s semipublic IRC channel for years in order to have seen 

tier 7: glowfic

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so you know how deep learning & neural network “AI training” is like, “here’s a task, and by trying billions of times the computer will eventually find the best way to achieve that task” ?

Someone is compiling a document of every time an AI ended up achieving the programmed goal in unintended ways, instead of what was actually meant, and it’s an amazing read. (you can also submit your own examples)

Creatures bred for speed grow really tall and generate high velocities by falling over
When repairing a sorting program, genetic debugging algorithm GenProg made it output an empty list, which was considered a sorted list by the evaluation metric.
Evaluation metric: “the output of sort is in sorted order” Solution: “always output the empty set” 
Evolved player makes invalid moves far away in the board, causing opponent players to run out of memory and crash
Reward-shaping a soccer robot for touching the ball caused it to learn to get to the ball and vibrate touching it as fast as possible
RL agent that is allowed to modify its own body learns to have extremely long legs that allow it to fall forward and reach the goal.
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Just want to come back to this post and add this amazing example as well

Heres an AI that was supposed to learn how to walk using six legs. 

After many failed attempts. It decided it was easier to walk upside down

Forest fires are so weird. On what other planet do you just suddenly have such a violent chemical reaction? Idk probably none cause on what other planet do you have a bunch of carbon-carbon bonds sitting immersed in a bunch of oxygen? It’s not a stable situation, and after the fire has to be restored with solar power

Venus!

Fun Venus fact: it has fewer craters on its surface than you’d expect, and they all look suspiciously young. As far as we can tell, the whole surface of Venus is not that much more than a half billion years old. So what makes this so?

It is Earth-sized, which is theoretically enough to sustain tectonic activity. But we don’t see traditional plates there. Remember that Earth’s tectonic plates come in two flavors: continental plates, which are long-lived and low density, floating high in the mantle, and oceanic plates, which are heavier, younger, and are continually refreshed, spreading out from the center of the oceans and being subducted back in to the mantle where they collide with the continents.

As an incidental consequence, this means that a lot of ocean water gets sucked up in to the mantle during the subduction process. Water is very much unstable at tectonic pressures and temperatures, so it usually finds its way back out to the surface as a volcanic gas or something, but in the meantime there’s enough of it down there to lubricate the movement of the plates. Basically on the same principle that makes wastewater injection cause small earthquakes during the fracking process.

Now, Venus is likely to have had liquid water oceans at some point, but the runaway greenhouse effect has long since boiled them off. This means that a)the weight of the oceans doesn’t land disproportionately on a subsets of the plates, and b)there’s no water being pulled down there to keep the plates well-greased. So nowadays on Venus, subduction just… doesn’t happen. The plates are too rigid and dry, too homogeneous. So they stay locked in place relative to one another.

That means Venus has volcanoes but not really earthquakes. The energy that would be released in the motion of plates just builds, and builds, and builds. Until it doesn’t any more. Every [n] hundred million years or so, Venus has its one earthquake, which carries all the accumulated energy of all the earthquakes that ever happened on Earth between now and the Cambrian era, all at once.

This is enough to melt the entire surface and then some. The whole crust, all the mountains and valley networks and continents and basins and everything that floats on the fluid mantle, is subducted all at once, falling back in the planet’s interior. Then, with the whole planet molten, the surface can cool enough to form a new crust.

Anyway, that’s why global warming is bad.

Holy fuck The whole crust Melts All at once???? #amazing

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alarming for my Venusian real estate portfolio if true

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I worked with toddlers and pre schoolers for three years. Sometimes I accidentally slip and tell a friend to say bye to an inanimate object (“say bye bus!”) & occasionally they unthinkingly just do it.

I’m glad there’s a teacher version of “accidentally called teacher ‘mom’”

when I worked at Medieval Times occasionally I would slip in real life and call people “my lord”

One time during family prayer, dad began: “our father who art in heaven, American Airlines, how can I help you?”

One time my dad went to the White Castle drive-thru and the lady (who was supposed to say ‘Welcome to White Castle, what’s your crave?’) asked, “Welcome to White Castle, what’s your problem?”

She apologized profusely while my dad proceeded to lose his shit laughing.

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Yesterday I went to Wendy’s and the girl said “Welcome to McDonalds” and then just sighed

Somebody in the elevator asked me what floor I lived on, and I answered “please open your books to page eight”, and we just kind of stared at each other, blinking.

i work retail full time and my script gets frequently messy - ill ask the same question twice, or say “$2.60 is your total” while handing back their change, or say “how are you doing today?” instead of “have a good day!” like name it ive bungled it

but anyway, this lady came thru my line buying a book and the review on the front said: “few books are well written, fewer still are important, and this book manages to be both”

as i handed her the bag i was trying to say “thanks, youre all set” and instead my brain mashed up the review and i said “thanks, youre important”

there was this short pause in which i tried to figure out what the fuck id just said. she blinked and then said “oh thank you! youre important too!”

the real kicker was one of my coworkers. when i was relating this story later his response was “at least you said something NICE. last week i accidentally combined ‘youre welcome’ and ‘no problem’ into ‘youre a problem’”

one time, since I used to work as a daycare teacher with preschoolers, i was on my college campus in my gym, and someone was running in the weight room and tripped over a machine and fell, and instead of offering to help, I just stared and said, “This is why we use our walking feet.” we both sat there for a while until the guy nodded and said, “yeah, okay, i should’ve done that.”

I’ve spent a good chunk of time working in kitchens, so I still will reflexively say shit like “behind” and “coming around” as I maneuver through spaces and around people.

Which, actually, not such a bad thing; I’m a big guy and can come across as imposing pretty easily. The position calls can help defuse that, and also help avoid collisions.

Less good is the time my brain was half functional and I let slip a “coming with a knife” while grocery shopping. THAT took some explaining.

I work in an office and send tens of emails to customers every day. Once my mum asked me to send her a train ticket I had bought for her. I emailed her “Hello mum, as agreed, please find attached the ticked you requested. Thanks, Alex”

i worked as a camp counselor, and i would have the kids tap somewhere on my legs if they needed something because im a pretty tall dude. today asked my cat if he needed something.

I have woken up in a cold sweat saying “is that for here or to go?”

Every time a friend thanks me, and I respond with “gladly” or “my pleasure”, I die completely 1000% inside

I work at a plasma donation center. When processing donors, we call them by name, they walk up to the counter, and then we ask for their name and donor number. One time, instead of saying “Robert” I hollered “Name and donor number!?” into a full waiting room. Three people started announcing their names and donor numbers before we all realized that I fucked up.

In college, I was a barista at Borders (remember Borders, you guys?!) I once drove through Taco Bell on my way home after a shift. When the cashier said, “okay, that’ll be $5.46!” I cheerfully responded, “Do you have a Borders rewards card?”

I have dealt with so many difficult customers over the years that I used to angrily call my dog “Sir” when I was mad at him.

My first job was at my nearest Panera, and after coming home from a ten-hour Sunday morning shift, I was exhausted; but when my mom called me to come downstairs, instead of replying in the grumpy teenagerish tone I usually would, I said in my cheeriest, fakest voice, “Not a problem at all, let me just check with my manager!” before realizing my mistake.

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my coworker went to back up the cash registers one time and she had been at customer service right before. when we finish with a customer we have to sometimes get the attention of the next person and will shout “i can get the next person in line!” but instead of saying that she yelled “HI WHAT CAN I HELP YOU WITH” to everyone in the general area

I have told my dog “no thank you” so many times after working at a preschool

a couple of times i’ve gotten stuck in a hello how are you good how are you good how are you loop with an equally tired Fred Meyer’s cashier after a long shift but the best time was after a 10 to 10 post-holidays after they told me my total, I asked if they would like a bag today and after a confused few seconds they were like, “no… I have the bags”

Worked in a gallery where we asked people to take off their backpacks in order not to accidentally damage paintings. So when I went to the shop later and saw a guy in the line in front of me, I told him he had to remove his backpack. He probably thought I was politely trying to rob him.

The other day they had me working with softserve and fried dough. I was burned out because I kept bouncing back and forth between the fryer and my register and these people had like, 8 things in their order. We get to the ice cream part of the order, and it comes in a bowl or cone. Instead of saying “Would you like the vanilla in a bowl or cone?” I said “Would you like the bowl in a vanilla or cone?” And we all stopped and had to think that through as my cart runner is staring me down like “tf are you doing?”

I work at Hardees and we have to yell “thank you” whenever we’re told to do something because of how loud the kitchen is.

One morning, my mom hollered at me to wake up, and half-asleep me yells at full volume,

THANK YOU

i work with dogs, and i have to be a bit strict with them sometimes in order to keep fights from breaking out. recently, while making tea, the kettle started boiling sooner than i wanted, so without thinking i turned around sharply, pointed my finger at it and stared it down, and said, “Bad boy! You need to wait!” needless to say i was very glad i was alone

I know I’ve reblogged this a billion times but I’ve worked retail for 8 years and these things are never not funny.

I used to work in a call center for a bank and we had to end our calls with, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” And one time I was talking to my dad, ending the call and said that and he’s somewhat hard of hearing, so he goes, “What?” And I just went, “NOTHING I LOVE YOU, BYE.” And he started laughing as I hung up, because he’d figured out what I said.

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My father called me once and I answered with “thank you for choosing Pizza Hut [city name], how are you today?”

you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!

Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.

He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.

The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”

It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.

He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died.  He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.

Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough. 

You’re not Terry Pratchett. 

You are you.

And Terry would love that. 

I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line.  I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern.  “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.

“Yes,” I said.  “But I like seeing how authors grow.”

He brightened and reached for his pen.  “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.