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Reasons why computer problems seem to mysteriously vanish as soon as a technician shows up:

You were spacing out and skipping a step somewhere without realising it, and you can’t reproduce it when you try to demonstrate it because now you’re paying attention to what you’re doing

It’s an intermittent electrical connection fault that’s being aggravated by movement/vibrations in your desk; you need to check your cables

The act of explaining the problem to someone caused you to figure out what you were doing wrong

The real cause of the problem was somewhere upstream of your terminal device – for example, at the network service provider – and it got fixed at the source while you were waiting

Your computer is in a location with poor airflow and is overheating; waiting for the technician to arrive gave it a chance to cool off

Despite all appearances to the contrary, modern computers actually have very good fault recovery, and most minor problems will sort themselves out on their own if you give it a minute

Magic

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Hi! I have every disease! Do you want one?

How about you follow me to this special room

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it pisses me off SO bad how transphobes have so effectively used sports to launder transphobia and misogyny to people. like does nobody remember like ~5-10 years ago when it was a MAJOR feminist talking point to argue for desegregating sports and going by skill level instead of gender separation??? and now, because so many cis people hate trans people so violently and think we should be excluded from all aspects of public life, you’ve got a whole bunch of women who call themselves feminists laundering misogynistic talking points about how “women are just inherently weaker and worse at athletics than men :(( it’s just biology and women are inherently inferior :(( this is definitely not misogyny that’s unsupported by science, women are just weaker and worse at things :((“ like girl open your ears and listen to what you’re saying!!

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>You see a strange creature dart under your car.

>CHECK UNDER CAR.

>You have discovered COTURNIX QUAIL CHICK.

>Side quest "WHY DID THE QUAIL CROSS THE ROAD" available.

>WHY DID THE QUAIL CROSS THE ROAD: Ask your next door neighbor about the COTURNIX QUAIL CHICK.

>NEIGHBOR: I haven't seen that before. Though I hear THE FARMER ACROSS THE WAY caught a strange bird on his property last week.

>WHY DID THE QUAIL CROSS THE ROAD: Ask THE FARMER ACROSS THE WAY about the COTURNIX QUAIL CHICK.

>THE FARMER ACROSS THE WAY: We don't keep birds. But you might want to ask THE FARMER DOWN THE ROAD. He has lots of birds.

>THE FARMER ACROSS THE WAY gave you two SWEET CORN and one CUCUMBER.

>WHY DID THE QUAIL CROSS THE ROAD: Talk to THE FARMER DOWN THE ROAD.

>THE FARMER DOWN THE ROAD: Oh! You found my COTURNIX QUAIL CHICK! He keeps escaping. Thank you so much!!

> You have cleared side quest WHY DID THE QUAIL CROSS THE ROAD. You have gained +2 to NEIGHBORLY BONDS and +3 to CHARISMA. THE FARMER DOWN THE ROAD has been added to your CONTACTS LIST.

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I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

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not to be rude but some of y'all need to look on the bright side sometimes. like, yeah sure the world is fucked and people suck and we all die whatever, sure, but like. go outside.

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why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

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Ah these children who always create problems for poor mothers....

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damn people rly hate type 2 diabetics don't they

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no animal was harmed during the making of this video. not one. for the few minutes that we were shooting film, the guns of each hunter fell silent. the industrial bolt throwers observed a moment's peace and the jaws of every predator hung softly open. no fish bit any hook and the bait worms held off on drowning only until the cameras stopped. the tails of ruminants ceased to flick just as their attendant flies, in unison, landed on their flanks to catch their tiny breaths. a spider instantly stopped winding silk around a wasp, patiently waiting for the caesura to end. a young veterinarian paused with the syringe in their hand. somewhere, a colicky baby stopped biting its mother's nipple and nursed happily for the very first time. we're sorry. we're sorry it couldn't have been longer. we didn't know this would happen.

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Get these ai writing assistants out of my face!!!! I don't care if my writing is bad at least it is mine!!!!

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Today I saw a leaf that looked like a frog and I was like haha nice and then it hopped because it WAS a frog and I started crying bc life is really full of everyday miracles including but not limited to experiencing frogs

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I feel like chatgpt came around and everyone immediately forgot what they were doing to get stuff done before. like writing centers, extensions, extra help, templates, office hours, beta readers, random generators, and art and writing prompts have all existed for ages. even if you were cheating there's always been sparknotes, photomath, copying, paying someone else to do it, faking that your grandma died, and whatever. all of that stuff is more reliable and doesn't fuck over the planet. and you might actually learn something

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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mutuals can always dm me but be warned i talk like your coworker who is trying too hard to get to know you and my response times are akin to the response times you might get if we were communicating by letter

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Whenever I think about students using AI, I think about an essay I did in high school. Now see, we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I just couldn't do it. I got 25 pages in and my brain refused to read any more. I hated it. And its not like I hate the classics, I loved English class and I loved reading. I had even enjoyed Of Mice and Men, which I had read for fun. For some reason though, I absolutely could NOT read The Grapes of Wrath.

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

However you feel about higher education, I think its undeniable that students using chatgtp is to their detriment. And by extension a detriment to anyone they work with or anyone who has to rely on them for something.