mcbirdface

[mcbirdface]

basic human empathy has got to make a comeback divas

[mcbirdface]

real sadists understand that you can torture The Character simply by forcing them to live with themself

[mcbirdface]

they should invent a 2025 where good things happen

[mcbirdface]

a good sailor will always return to the sea

[mcbirdface]

at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"

which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress

[mcbirdface]

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"

[mcbirdface]

I know that some British people take umbrage at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

[mcbirdface]

personally I don't think if you're a kid you should be using your real name on the internet. very easy for people to find out too much about you. instead you should spend years using a different made-up name that becomes part of your persona to an arguably even greater degree than your actual name and then when you grow up and find out you're trans you have a ready-made name to switch to even if it's probably like Leaf or something

[mcbirdface]

A good rule of thumb for AI is "would you trust a trained pigeon to do this?"

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

"We trained a pigeon to recognise good CV:s and left it in charge of sorting through all our job applications" uh perhaps consider not doing that.

[mcbirdface]

on a dark & stormy night, there was a creature . & you’re never going to beleive what it did next

[mcbirdface]

From A tehrani resident who barely got out let me inform you of some of the things currently going on here:

Israel bombed two of the highways leading out of tehran, both are blocked now. The remaining highways had heavy traffic until few hours ago. After israel bombed every oil tanks and refineries around tehran, a shortage of petrol happened. Now most petrol stations are out of work and if you're lucky enough to find one that's still operating, you have to stay in hours long lines in hopes of getting max 15 liters of petrol. So even with a car, it's not guaranteed you can get very far from the city.

There's also the matter of where to go and stay. The bank system is half working, no cash available at the time. And you can't exactly sleep in the deserts around the city. Most people still stuck in tehran don't have anywhere to go and they don't have the money to afford relocating themselves (it's always the lower class that gets the worst hits)

All of these are beside the fact that most people can't leave the city under any circumstance. They have chronic illnesses, they have sick family members who needs care, they work as emergency workers and can't leave their lines of duty.

But these mfs don't care about human life getting destroyed. It's just numbers to them, expendables. Our own government has abandoned people to die horrible deaths, they never cared and they don't care now. People of iran are worth nothing to nobody. It's Gaza all over again.

I have family and friends still in tehran who can't leave. I'm bracing myself for the worst case scenario. I hope all those who start war, add fuel to the flames of war, encourage it and cheer for it, burn and rot in hell. I don't really believe in hell and afterlife, but I hope it's all real just to see these people get what they deserve

[mcbirdface]

ghoul: i used to think i could control lizards with my mind but it turns out that lizards and i just have very similar ideas about the kind of stuff lizards should do

[mcbirdface]

I wonder if anyone has ever looked at me and thought "god I hope she's gay"

[mcbirdface]

when I was a kid I wished I had nosebleeds. I had some friends who had them and I was like. that looks so fucking cool. you're just sitting there and suddenly you're covered in blood. it looks so dramatic. it looks so... and here my language failed me. at such a humble age I did not have the vocabulary to describe the sublime. I just sat in incomprehensible jealousy. I turned out totally normal by the way

[mcbirdface]

Could yall stop shooting each other outside my window im trying to masturbate

[mcbirdface]

From a state hearing in Texas

[mcbirdface]

character: *isn’t 100% good or evil*

The Internet: hello naughty children it’s Discourse time