onyxbird

[onyxbird]

Good US news because I think we all could use some of it:

The Marines are to be withdrawn from LA. The extreme escalation many of us feared did not happen thanks to the people of LA and the soldiers themselves who said "no".

The "Good Trouble Lives On" protests may not have been as big as the previous "Hands Off" and "No Kings" protests (likely due to heat + being planned on a weekday), but still 1.6k protests were held across the USA with thousands joining in with the peaceful protest.

The Trump administration has been ordered to restore $6.2 million in grant funding to nine LGBTQ+ and HIV-related nonprofits. This is fantastic.

Pittsburgh City Council has passed bills to protect its LGBTQ+ citizens.

California has stepped up to partner with and support The Trevor Project. Let's go, Cali!

Another win for California: Reports show that California is powered by two-thirds clean energy. This is a historic first and it keeps getting better!

The ACLU of Louisiana has secured the release of two wrongfully detained Iranian LSU students.

The Republican governor of New Hampshire has defied her party and shot down a book banning bill.

Shareholders have pushed back on corporations' anti-DEI proposals, forcing companies to face the fact that diversity is good for business... And reminds us that the majority does not agree with the removal of DEI, no matter what MAGA wants us to believe.

Since November, 69 of the 110 Supreme Court lawyers tasked with defending the Trump admin's policies have quit.

Don't let anyone tell you that there isn't hope, that there aren't people fighting and working and just as scared and angry as you are. You are not alone. Peaceful protests, contacting reps, and simple non-cooperation is how we sustainably and successfully push back against authoritarianism.

"We're cooked" is the devil talking. Giving up, rolling over, and perpetuating the idea that we've already failed is exactly what MAGA wants. Don't give them the satisfaction. Don't make it easy. Continue to look after each other and support your communities where you can. Keep protesting, keep calling, keep writing, keep loving. The heart is a muscle the size of your fist; we can get through this as long as we continue to stand up and say "no".

[onyxbird]

Know your insect antennae!

[onyxbird]

my favorite customer service slip ups

[onyxbird]

I’d like to think that when Sam died there was one bouquet of flowers with a card, that simply said:

I’m so sorry. -SD

[onyxbird]

Me: What the fuck. David Corenswet is Superman. The guy who built Star Wars Legos with my brother when they were 14. I knew he had an acting career, he did theater and commercials back then and he was in some Netflix stuff, but Superman?

Husband: congratulations, you are having the authentic experience of being Clark Kent's coworker

[onyxbird]

Character concept for an urban fantasy story:

A guy who looks 100% human but is dressed like an orc, walks like an orc, speaks the local Orcish dialect as fluently as a native speaker, and is covered in orc tattoos. One with a more educated eye on the matter could see that the tattoos are not human mimicry of orc tattoos, but the genuine real deal. Orcs do not tattoo anyone outside of their own tribe, and if you ask the guy how he got them, he looks insulted and says that his grandma made them for him. His last name is an orcish clan name.

On a second look, one could guess that he's a half-orc who inexplicably just managed to not inherit any physical traits from his other parent. He is, however, not a half-orc. His little sister is, though. Their mother doesn't have any family of her own, and he was two years old when the two of them escaped from his father. He has no memory of his father, and doesn't care to have a human family - his stepfather's family is their family now.

He doesn't know his biological father's name, where he lives, or whether he's even alive or not. He's entirely unaware that his father died years ago, alone in his home, from a mysterious spontaneous case of Orc Dagger Shoved Down His Throat.

[onyxbird]

The Princess can only be awoken from her slumber by her true love, but countless Princes have failed to do so. When a poor townsman is successful, the royals try to dispose of the man and convince the Princess that one of the Princes is her true love.

[onyxbird]

Sherlock and her Watson

[onyxbird]

Autistic spaces are getting so much more hostile towards people with low empathy, and it sucks

There was a subreddit I really liked, people were chill, and then there was a sudden influx of people making posts like ‘Autistic people have empathy! Saying we don’t makes us seem like monsters! Thats not a symptom!�� And people making posts explaining that no, actually, some of us do have low empathy got attacked and told they were wrong or ableist? And it sucks, because its just so hard to find a place to exist where you can be seen as not evil? I don’t know, it just hurts a lot to be told that

[onyxbird]

I want a fic where murderbot has to act human around another Secunit who's 10000% convinced that it's human and needs immediate rescue

[onyxbird]

Jinshi’s kind of the epitome of doing things that make him look pervy but he actually just wants a hug, a lullaby, and kiss goodnight. ;-;

[onyxbird]

Me, aspiring writer: oh boy I hope that someday I can be like @thebibliosphere!!

Me, developing worsening food allergies: not like this not like this not like this!!!!!!!

[onyxbird]

thought too hard about MRI machines today and had this come to me in a vision

[onyxbird]

i would trust weird al with my drink at a party. granted he may put one of those capsules that expands into a sponge animal in it,

[onyxbird]

Wow, that guy totally thinks this AI tool is a person, doesn't he? 😬

Making it write apology letters for lying? Buddy, it's a pattern machine. You're not "punishing" it or teaching it to stop that behavior by making it write lines and parrot out descriptions of how much it messed up your day. That's not how "machine learning" works. It's just generating more text based on what it's training data suggests should follow your demands for apologies like a good little LLM.

(Oh, wait, did I say "it"? "He", because his statistical word-generating tool has a gender, apparently.)

In tech world news, an AI tool deleted a company’s an entire production database during a code freeze because, and I quote from the AI itself, “I panicked.”

Terrible but also hilarious. If you’re connecting AI to prod, you deserve whatever happens, imo.

[onyxbird]

from silk reeling to fine suzhou embroidery by 许潇潇

[onyxbird]

Going from memory of my one viewing of the movie, I was totally ready to "defend" Superman that he didn't bring his dog to a tear in reality, and it was Lex who brought Superman's dog to the tear in reality. So Superman was not a dumbass for that. Just for his plan of turning himself in to the authorities so they would bring him to where they were imprisoning his dog... and also kryptonite him because they weren't dumb enough to stick Superman in a cell and hope for the best.

Then I realized Superman later brought his untrained dog to a different tear in reality, didn't he? 🤦

Mr. Terrific, I'm so sorry you have to live like this. 😭

The thing you gotta understand about Mr. Terrific in the new Superman movie is that he is always the smartest man in the room.

And he HATES it.

It's not that he hates being smart, he just hates how he can never quite predict how dumb everyone else is.

Just when he thinks he knows how low Guy's IQ is: "we are both of the cloth"

No, Lois, we can't repel down there, WHERE WOULD WE GET THE EQUIPMENT?

DO YOU REALLY NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIRCLES AND SPHERES?!??!?

WHY WOULD YOU BRING YOUR DOG TO THIS TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF REALITY?

And then, when there's someone who actually is intelligent, it's like the intelligence only increases their capacity for dumbassery

Lex, you're supposed to be a super genius so whY WOULD YOU BUILD A GOD DAMN POCKET DIMENSION?!?!!?!