kirabug-tumbles

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@paulgadzikowski I’m stealing that (and giving you credit)

"these researchers published a paper on something that literally any of us could have told you 🙄" ok well my supervisors wont let me write something in my thesis unless I can back it up with a citation so maybe it's a good thing that they're amplifying your voice to the scientific community in a way that prevents people from writing off your experiences as annecdotal evidence

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Angry. My gender is angry.

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

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"Why are they calling me an Evil Overlord?" the Evil Overlord said.

"There is a saying that 'evil starts with treating people as things'," a minion said.

"So? I treat all people with dignity and respect!"

"You often change your definition of who's 'people', though."

"Doesn't everybody?"

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Mr. Rogers (hey you have your superheroes I have mine) can not only lift it but explain it to Thor.

Image description (too long for alt text):

Fourteen panel comic.

Based on a script by Matthew Wisner / Drawn @Bytwistwood

Setting: the roof of Mr. Roger’s house. The background is white is hints with occasional cloud. The house and its components are a tan or taupe color. Mr. Rogers is wearing black sneakers, taupe pants, a red cardigan sweater, a black tie, and a taupe shirt. Thor is wearing black and taupe boots, a black body suit with large taupe spots, a red cape, and a taupe winged helmet.

Panel 1: Mr Rogers is ascending a ladder up to the rooftop, from behind the house. Thor is sitting on the rooftop with one leg on either side, attaching an ACME lightning rod to the roof. A box of ACME lightning rods is nearby. Mjolnir is head-down on the apex of the roof between them.

Mr. Rogers: My! I thought I heard a commotion up here! Is that you, Thor?

Thor: Aye! Just going round town protecting homes from any storms I might… …be involved in.

Panel 2: Mr. Rogers is now sitting on the rooftop with his body facing the camera. He’s facing Thor and Thor has turned his body to face Mr. Rogers. Thor is still holding a lightning rod. Mr. Rogers has one hand on his ladder and the other on the roof apex.

Thor: Courtesy of SHIELD of course!

Mr. Rogers: Well then that’s much appreciated!

Thor: Two minutes and I’ll be done!

Panel 3: Mr. Rogers points gently at Mjolnir. Thor is out of the frame.

Mr. Rogers: Say, that’s an impressive hammer you have there. Would it be OK if I held it?

Thor: You certainly can, Mr. Rogers of the Hood.

Panel 4: Thor is smiling and working on the lightning rod, facing away from Mr. Rogers, who is off-panel.

Mr. Rogers: Is it heavy?

Thor: Well there are (emphasized) many who find it… …(all caps) IMMOVABLE. heh heh.

Panel 5: Same as panel 4 except Thor looks surprised.

Mr. Rogers: How interesting! It doesn’t (emphasis) seem very heavy to me.

Thor: Huh

Panel 6: The camera is facing down the apex of the roof. In the background Mr. Rogers is holding Mjolnir up as if it was a hair dryer or a balloon on a stick. It is clearly no effort for him to hold. In the foreground Thor has twisted his body to look back at Mr. Rogers with mild shock.

Panel 7: Mr. Rogers is the only one in the shot. He’s holding Mjolnir’s handle up near the head of the hammer. It is still clearly very light. Mr. Rogers is smiling with his eyes closed.

Mr. Rogers: But you know, sometimes life is a lot like that…

Panel 8: The camera is pointed down the apex of the roof, but this time with Mr. Rogers in the foreground, the camera facing his profile, still holding the hammer as if it were a toy. Thor has fully turned around to face Mr. Rogers and appears to be extremely shocked, with eyes and mouth wide open.

Mr Rogers: Something that may be very easy for one person… might be very difficult for another.

Panel 9: Mr. Rogers, facing the camera, from the shoulders up. We can see just a bit of Mjolnir’s head in the shot. Mr. Rogers is smiling.

Mr. Rogers: Have you fund this to be true?

Panel 10: Thor, turned toward Mr. Rogers, from the shoulders up. He still looks a bit shocked and there’s a drip of sweat on his forehead.

Thor: Uh, yes… yes I have.

Panel 11: Mr. Rogers is handing Mjolnir to Thor. Thor still looks shocked. Thor is watching Mr. Rogers with great intent. Mr. Rogers is fully relaxed.

Mr. Rogers: Do you know why that is?

Panel 12: The camera has zoomed out to show Mr. Roger’s whole house, with Mr. Rogers and Thor still on the roof. Thor is now holding Mjolnir and a lightning rod, twisted to face Mr. Rogers, who is sitting comfortably with his hands in his lap.

Mr. Rogers: I think that it’s because everyone is special and unique in different ways. Just because someone has difficulty lifting your hammer doesn’t mean they aren’t talented in other ways.

Panel 13: The camera has zoomed out to show the entire earth, with a black background full of stars, a dark tan set of oceans, and the north and south american continents in taupe.

Mr. Rogers: …In fact, I suspect those individuals… can probably do things that you and I would never dream of.

Panel 14. The camera is back on Thor and Mr. Rogers, but from behind them. We can’t see Thor’s expression but his body still looks a bit tense, shoulders high, holding Mjolnir. Mr. Rogers looks relaxed, hands still in his lap.

Thor: That is true. You are very wise, Sir Rogers, I am humbled by your counsel.

Mr. Rogers: And I am so glad you decided to visit today.

Do you think Dick Grayson could lift Mjölnir? 🤔

Mmm... nah.

Although I would chalk that more up to big hammers not being his style than really Mjolnir's standards of worthiness.

I feel like the Barry Allen or Wally West Flash could lift Mjolnir but only to run it over to someone else and not even register what it means that they were able to lift it.

Hal Jordan probably couldn't lift it but Kyle Rayner is a pretty strong Maybe.

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I’m a UX designer - one of the jobs that is “being replaced” by chatGPT. My job is to talk to the product owners to get the business goals, talk to the end users to get the user goals, measure usage and feedback about current and future designs, make sure that every element on the page works the way users expect it to, make sure it’s accessible for people with disabilities, make sure it looks attractive and enticing and comfortable to use, etc. etc.

I’ve been told that LLMs can replace my job. They can tell you what roughly 80% of the people would say (but not for our specific people, just “people”) and they can design an interface based on what most of the interfaces they’ve been trained on would do.

Can they build an address form? Yeah, probably, for a standard US address that accepts any type of address.

Can they build an address form that works for retirees that have both international and US addresses because they “snowbird” to a different country every year, accept the dates for when they leave one address to go to the other and vice versa, reject PO Boxes, suggest address adjustments based on USPS standards, and compare international addresses against countries we’re not allowed to mail to? Hell no.

Can they handle error messaging? For one error yes but for the entire form validation process my developers are way better than the LLM and English is their second language.

The thing is, jobs are hard. They’re supposed to be hard. You wouldn’t be getting paid if they were easy.

And yes, there were a bunch of developers (and designers) in some FAANG* companies sitting on their hands getting paid for not doing a lot of work during COVID. That doesn’t mean their work was easy. It means they were under-utilized. And usually that’s more about bad management than the tech people.

To get where I am as a six-digit-salary UX designer I got a bachelor’s degree in English, a master’s degree in software engineering, seven years in customer support, and close to 20 years in UX design. I’m currently studying for my IAACP certification in accessibility. And yeah, there are a lot of things I don’t need to research anymore because I’ve done the work (or worked with amazing researchers) so many times that I’m probably going to guess right the first time.

But if someone called me tomorrow and asked me to do a user interview or a usability test, audit a content library, test a site for accessibility, do a heuristic evaluation of an interface, pick some colors for a brand, or debug vanilla JavaScript, I’ve done the work, I know both the concepts and the theory, and at worst I need to dust off my notes.

An LLM can tell you what Fitt’s Law is. It can even tell you when to use it. It can’t turn around and design an interface where it intentionally uses Fitt’s Law. It can’t look at a design and say “the problem here is these two controls are too far apart.”

That’s what humans are for.

As for what happens if you come in to our line of work and can’t do the work, well, either a company will see something in the business arrangement that makes it worth their while to train you up (unlikely) or they will let you go. And you will become one of thousands of people bitching in social media that you can’t find a way to break in to UX and that we’re gatekeeping.

Yeah, we’re gatekeeping on skill. You need to put in the work.

Why are you using chatgpt to get through college. Why are you spending so much time and money on something just to be functionally illiterate and have zero new skills at the end of it all. Literally shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to waste thirty grand you can always just buy a sportscar.

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While food texture and taste issues are not typically associated with ADHD, you’ll find a lot of healthy recipes with a variety of foods in ADHD cookbooks. Which means they’re usually very quick to put together, so you won’t feel like you’re wasting a bunch of time on something you aren’t sure you’ll like. (Generally they’re inexpensive too.)

Also if there’s a flavor or main ingredient you know you like, doing a search on that flavor can turn up all kinds of recipes using it that you can check out.

Do you know of any recipe sites or similar that are designed for finding meals based on ones you like, or otherwise designed to help "picky" eaters find new recipes?

I'm hoping you or your followers might know since it's accessibility related.

I have a lot of food texture and taste sensitivities that make it hard to eat, and I'm having no luck finding anything on my own that could help me narrow down options.

I do not but I am pretty sure someone who follows me does: anyone here have suggestions?

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NEVER GIVE UP

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It’s notable that most prey animals here on earth can and will kill (and sometimes eat) something smaller than them. Biting flies flicked off with a tail. A small or injured mouse for the calcium in its bones. Sometimes carrion.

Nothing freaks out most North Americans more than the site of a white tail deer with blood on its mouth because most of us either don’t know or try not to think about Bambi also being partially carnivorous.

I love the OP’s story writing! It’s clear and has great visuals. I do think killing a fly would be seen as normal (although the actual method might raise eyebrows.) It’s the first time the OP takes down something non-sentient the size of a wolf because there’s been no meat on the ship for weeks that I think they’d start to get concerned.

Saw someone say that most intelligent alien life forms are likely prey animals, so I wanted to add something after falling down the humans are space orcs rabbit hole for the millionth time.

Humans are predators right? But in our day to day lives we don’t really act like predators very often. Very few of us actually have an experience with hunting, with one exception; bugs. Especially flies or mosquitoes.

Imagine you board a ship and all of your crew mates are life forms from other planets, all of them just so happen to be prey. You’re an engineer and general aren’t seen as very threatening. You’re the first human the crews ever had on board so they have no reason to think you would be. That is until somehow a fly gets onto your ship.

It’s meal time and this fly just will not stop bothering you. No one else seems to be doing anything so you decide to be the one to kill it. You go dead still and track it with your eyes, watching to see where it lands. Once it does you move slowly until your hand is directly above it, holding your breath before slamming your hand down. Finally the pesky bug is gone and you can go back to eating. To you it’s no big deal. I mean it’s just killing one bug right? But when you look up after rubbing the dead fly off the table with your shirt, everyone’s staring at you with a look of shock, horror, or fear.

After a minute or two everyone seems to unfreeze and go back to what they were doing, still nervously glancing over their shoulders at you every minute or so.

After that your crew mates seem to always be slightly on edge around you. Listening to you more often than before, and letting you lead in situations where violence might need to be resorted too. While it’s not technically your job on explorations, you in no way mind being able to protect your crew.

Plz tell me how to tag this is my first time posting something I actually spent time thinking about.

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At this point, why do you think people keep falling for Lex Luthor's whole thing?

Like, i argued with my dad last week because he swore that Mr Luthor had changed and that now he was a better man and i'm like "it's thr 6th time we have this conversation".

Simple, same reason people fall for any hate cult

Because its easy, because it tells them what they already want to hear, and because it invites them to not think.

(A popular campaign poster for Lex Luthor)

Lex Luthor is the kind of person that people are told to look up to. He "built a business with his own hands" (ignoring the fact that he 100% inherited LexCorp as already one of the most profitable tech companies on the planet) he "provides jobs" (his union busting efforts are LEGENDARY) he's a "true American" (most of his wealth is sheltered outside the US for tax purposes). He's the American success story as defined to a child by a society that wants that to be children's first impression of the country they live in. The industrialist, the business owner, the self made man.

And many people, one can hope most people, eventually grow out of that idea. They go on to higher education or through the circumstances of life educate themselves. They find that the world is more complicated than they thought, that a lot of the ideals they were taught in simplistic forms as children are indeed much more multifaceted than they believed. That their American Patriotism must be tempered with an understanding of America's imperfect history, the economic prosperity is often build on the backs of those whose voices are unheard, and that the idea of what and who "an American" is has been fed to them from specific angles both purposefully and unknowingly. Most people find at least some small way to break that cycle, to move it forward so at least their children have something NEW to rebel against.

Lex Luthor doesn't do that. And he appeals to people who, when confronted with the idea that life is not as simple as it was taught to them in the 6th grade clap their hands over their ears and scream until the people trying to educate them are silences in their own minds. Lex Luthor is a genius, he's self made, he's a real American. And that allows his supporters to clap their hands together and put their critical thinking skills back up on that dusty shelf.

Because if they flinch, if they recognize the truth. Not only that Lex Luthor is an arrogant fraud, propped up on the backs of idiots he's throw by the dozens into a volcano without looking down to grow back 2 inches of his long deceased hairline but ALSO that people like Superman. The alien, exotic, the 'illegal' and the 'radical' are not only correct in their accusations but also correct in their EXPECTATIONS.

Then that means they have to CHANGE. It means they have to take the blinders off, treat others with kindness as a baseline, offer assistance to those in need without them having to prove "worth". It means they have to pull their heads up, take a breath of cold, fresh air and realize the kind of person they've BEEN this whole time.

And some people would rather forgive Luthor 100 times, than have to follow Superman for an hour.

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every time a website has the “remember me” checkbox on it i get earwormed. and then i get sad. life is weird that way.

youtu.be/A0azOIk0K…

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(reply to the kroger & walmart chicken fettucine alfredo listeria outbreak)

hey holy shit. the sound I made when I read this. this is exactly why the chicken fettucine recall is so scary, it is such a huge comfort food and a bunch of folks eat it while pregnant. I am so fucking glad my post found you and that you got medical attention right away.

yours is an example of doing exactly the right thing: listeria is especially dangerous while pregnant, and there are antibiotics that can be prescribed for high-risk folks during the early stages of symptoms or even before symptoms begin. and while listeria can take up to 80 days to cause illness, it can also cause issues within hours or days of eating contaminated food.

for you and for everyone else trying to avoid the general news right now, here is a list to help keep up with recalls and foodborne illness outbreaks in the united states since I do not post all of them:

FDA recall list (food, drug, medical device, etc recalls with press announcements, usually bigger food recalls have announcements)

FDA enforcement reports (more recalls go here, but more difficult to navigate than the recall list with announcements)

USDA FSIS recall list (they cover different food than FDA, especially meat. the chicken fettucine alfredo recall was posted here)

NHTSA recall list (vehicles, car seats, tires, and equipment recalls!)

CPSC recall and safety warning list (products! there have been a LOT of recalls of baby stuff recently!)

FDA outbreak investigations (you can see the status of outbreaks as they happen and get investigated, this is often where recalls start)

CDC active investigations of foodborne illness outbreaks (outbreaks can have both an FDA page and a CDC page. they cover different information)

foodsafetynews (news about food safety ONLY! not a government source. mostly focused on the US and canada, but also news around the world. some of what they post involves commentary on the current administration, BUT they post about bigger and more relevant recalls that wind up in the ever-tricky FDA enforcement reports.)

best of luck to you and your baby, and make sure you get plenty of rest!!!!!

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It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

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I can’t stop thinking about crocodiles for some reason so here’s some cool pictures I found of probably the second largest one in captivity, his name is Utan:

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

and that’s not even a real power bite, that’s mostly just heavy bone falling on heavy bone from his jaws and the air rushing out from between them

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oh to be a powerful lesbian sorceress living in the snowy evergreen forests of some slavic country, reviled by village elders as a wicked, seductive temptress for spiriting their wives and daughters away to come live with me in my log cabin where we pick berries and mushrooms and roast them with meat over campfires and sleep together on piles of bear and deerskin furs

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Y’all should read A Girl & Her Fed by @kbspangler

One of the ways that people make fun of originalist interpretation of the constitution is "séance with the founding fathers", but damned if I don't think that's the coolest possible premise for a legal system.

There are a bunch of guys floating around in the afterlife, and the government has a whole branch devoted to communing with them to get their interpretation of an increasingly-distant society that has moved on in terms of science, culture, and demography? You have to explain to Madison what a router is? You sit Hamilton down and break the news of 9/11 to him?

So many places you can go with the idea, it's really solid from a worldbuilding perspective. There's even a term for it, necrocracy, rule by those who have died. And it bakes in all these conflicts about the direction of the world and who has the ultimate say in what happens next.

And every time I see someone deride originalism with "séance with the founding fathers" I get distracted by the worldbuilding of it.

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Tell me you’re young enough that your ISP has never been driven out of business without telling me…

got me good with this whole email address thing. you make email account as child for one purpose neopets.com and now all this. bait and switch. not nice.

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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.