racooninurtrash

[racooninurtrash]

I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator

[racooninurtrash]

i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates and besides, AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

[racooninurtrash]

it's just that when i love something, i love it loud and i love it long. i've never figured out the halfway of it - when i hold something, i let it scar me.

[racooninurtrash]

these days when you close your eyes, what else do you want but to be loved in a warm and permanent way. the open soft hand, the lowered voice, the blanket around your shoulders. you want to be loved like hot chocolate, like spring flowers, like dawn. you want to go to sleep protected and wake up fully rested. you want the wounds in you to matter, you want someone who is patient around your scars.

how greedy. these days when you look around, how many little ways are you assaulted by the notion that it's wrong to need others. individualism! capitalism! bootstraps! every time you try to language it, you need to cover up your desire into a carefully-worded soundbite: of course no single person can fulfill every need and we must invest in communities and i must be responsible for my own mental health and

but the yawning in you doesn't understand logic or sound or reason. it only sees sundays, only sees what you do-not-have, only sees the look others share and that you so desire. sick with dread at it, sick at how it makes you want, how you yearn in no direction.

no matter how many people you take with you to bed, no matter how many hands touch the tattoo you share with your sibling, no matter how many times you kneel with your knees bleeding. always, the ache that never stops chewing, the desperate sick loneliness that never quite abates. it never stops humming, i need i need i need. you burn your inner child for warmth and scatter the ashes into your morning coffee.

so you shut up and you load your life like shotgun shells and you try to make yourself whole in the way that others are whole. you let your father's words spill out of your mouth. you make a quick joke rather than tear your heart open. you sing into the mic and go home with stars in your eyes. your life is beautiful and you're lucky! you have everything a person can need!

but it would be nice, is the thing. to have a love that feels like peace.

[racooninurtrash]

this is beautiful and utterly real

i'm going to listen to the album of the artist you like even though he's not really my vibe. i'm going to read the book you suggested even though it's not a genre i usually enjoy. i'll watch the show. i will try the recipe. i will play the video game, or at least watch a deep-dive youtube explaining the really-long lore so i have some idea of what's happening. the movie you suggested is too scary for me, but - i mean, the wikipedia page is kind of interesting - look at the length of the section Controversy.

this is not a burden. i think maybe "burden" and "love" might be oppositional, the way sometimes "love" and "hate" are not opposites. a burden is a dragging. i love you because you brought me to the water, and it is the horizon of your heart. i love you because of your nervous pacing around the edges of the rabbit hole.

often you are right. some songs on that album remind me of the spark in your eyes. the book was really thought-provoking.

more i just want to understand enough that you can talk to me. that you can explain, in depth, why it matters that wheat has shallow roots. i love you, even platonically - your love of this thing leaks into me. i watch you, cautious and dancing, the shy desire for you to smear the colors of this thing into my life, too.

they are your colors, though. of course i want them here, in the marginalia of my life. you matter to me. i want them to crowd the little moments of my day. i want your fingerprints scattered throughout the rooms of my heart.

one time i spent about six months reading and researching a particular author, just so i could talk to one of my friends about him. i never got the chance. she betrayed me, broke my trust, and sided with her abusive ex-boyfriend. standing in the sodden floodplain of what she left over, some bitter part of me asked - isn't that tragic? you have all this knowledge and nothing to do with it.

but i did have all that knowledge, though. when i reach for it, i still feel it glow.

[racooninurtrash]

Stress having physical effects is so stupid your body's just like "you've been having a real shit time and I'm about to make it worse" I hope you die I hope we both die

[racooninurtrash]

getting complimented by someone whilst they’re also misgendering you is so weird because it’s like thanks but also fuck you

[racooninurtrash]

nothing (not even the rain) will stop a man and his weapon (me and my umbrella) on a mission (getting icecream)

[racooninurtrash]

it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.

it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.

i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.

in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?

i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.

except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.

my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.

during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.

something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.

something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.

[racooninurtrash]

dinosaurs….. QUEER dinosaurs

All of the Prehistoric Pride guys in one collective post to celebrate pride month. Choose your fighter and have an awesome time :D

More suggestions are always welcome, I sadly was not able to cover everyone, but I will do more of these in the future!

I am going to add more and more to the collection as I get them done :D

If you would like to support my silly little dinosaur art, then you can buy any of these Prideaurs as stickers from my Etsy shop, which I just set up recently. I am pretty new to this entire business side of art things, but I am trying my best :D so a like or a reblog would go a long way. Thank you guys so much for all your kind words and support!

[racooninurtrash]

it should be illegal to take a nap and still have a headache when you wake up. like no i shut it off and back on again why are you still here

[racooninurtrash]

the surprise people express when they learn i’ve never used ai to do my schoolwork for me is honestly baffling

“i asked chatgpt-” ohhh ok so nothing you are about to say matters at all

[racooninurtrash]

and i’d like to give a special shoutout to bisexuals who are losers

[racooninurtrash]

mutuals do this!!!!

[racooninurtrash]

hah. a PET peeve. about CATS (that look like mussolini)

guys im starting to think my physics teacher is an avatar of the web

he spent like half an hour today in class ranting about how nobody on earth has free will exept for him because he invented a device which frees him from the shackles of the universes design and gives him the power to create alternate universes and then casualy mentioned that the device is probably slowly killing him. Also he didnt seem to pick up on the irony that the device that supposedly freed him from the universes control was, according to him, decided by the universe and therefore he was simply trading one puppeteer for another.

[racooninurtrash]

as someone who’s very fun of meme-y fonts/formats, i need to reblog this

[racooninurtrash]

helen:

real estate agent in every universe