Ugh the woman on the table next to me at nandos is talking about writing a book with AI, like she sounds like she's actually writing a book with AI and planning to try and publish it (lol good luck with that), meanwhile, I'm sat here like 😡😡😡
13 notes
·
View notes
I hate this fucking post. Poor people have always existed and it was not this guys fucking dad with his own house and two cars. There was always people living in the street or struggling to make rent or living in "today's" poverty conditions
625 notes
·
View notes
There is this whole idea that flipping a two sided coin doesn't have a 50-50 probability. It's not a new idea by any means, but the explanation is if you measured the mass of the coin, the force of the flip, the temperature of the coin & of the room, the force of any breeze, wind, or vibration in the air as it traveled, and so on, you could accurately determine within a small margin of error what side the coin will land on every time, and if you kept those constant it would flip on the same side every time. And that idea is also KIND OF the explanation for the conclusion in quantum physics that there is no free will.
A lot of people hear that and either clutch their pearls, roll their eyes, or aren't interested either way. (I mean, when you say some shit like that you're just going to immediately turn off any interest most people would have otherwise had but I'm digressing now). We all like to think we make decisions and choices, and then amateurs who want to talk about quantum mechanics alienate everyone by saying it's not true: you were always going to make these choices with no chance to make the other one.
But what I said in the first paragraph is something-like (but not exactly) what it means when you hear or read that according to quantum physics we have no free will. That if we had an unfathomable device that has been measuring all the variables of every single particle that was expelled during the Big Bang, with an also-sufficient/also-currently-unfathomable algorithm to plug those variables into, all within a computer that could do all of the calulations for BILLIONS of years, we could compute exactly where every particle was going and where it would end up, including those that make up the stars and planets, that make up the ground and oceans, that make up the animals and plants, that make up your brain and all of the proteins and neurotransmitters. That if it could all be measured and an algorithm sufficiently built then the decisions you make are already determined by the ongoing relationships and interactions the particles that make up your brain had in the past and are having right now.
However, humans cannot measure that, they likely never ever will.
Anyone that tells me they don't like quantum mechanics because something something affront to nature blah blah "they" don't believe in free will, etc. literally doesn't know it's just a rescale of the coin toss description. You still believe coin tosses are 50-50 because you aren't going to measure the variables used to receive an answer, you can still believe in free will because you can't measure the variables used to determine the ultimate path of all particles; I mean, I wouldn't become a theoretical physicist if that meant so much to you but I'm not your dad, do what you want.
Edit: I know I described the science mostly wrong, please check out the replies and reblogs for others' corrections and feel free to add corrections of your own for mine and others' learning, thank you.
105 notes
·
View notes
Please read "the s-classes i raised" for insane women. :D
Yesss!! That's the only other work in the male oriented OP gamer genre I've read! :D
Fully agree that the insane women are great. I love the hip teen who can snap you like a twig, cool girlboss guild leader who can snap you like a twig, and terrible yet entertaining person who can snap you like a twig. We have such a good diversity of women that I'd even forgive a love interest at this point.
It is genuinely a very cute work. A good palate cleanser for everything else. Definitely a reaction to Solo Leveling, since it is the exact opposite of Solo Leveling in every conceivable way while still having identical worldbuilding. The first chapter surprised me when it depicted just a warm and sincere and meaningful "I love you!" between two men, and that energy is maintained. It's actioney but sweet. The MC does not start out as Your Literal Mother and then transform into a badass who can beat anybody up - he says as Your Literal Mother, becomes very good at being Your Literal Mother, brainwashes you a bit?, and as a result in the moments when somebody kidnaps his cat and he does go apeshit, it's very satisfying. Very much more proof that a good supporting cast is everything.
It is funny to read this sweet and pretty straight-forward character-wise work and then immediately open up orv to read a chapter straight of kdj going absolutely insane and manipulating the Greek pantheon to steal a godhood. And you're like ah. orv is...really another level. Of insane. It is not normal behavior. I'm putting it next to Animorphs as a work that is genuinely uncrossover-able.
Obviously, I have a better version in my head. I would have tweaked a few things. I especially liked the idea of making Big Bro and Lil Bro estranged because of more than just...super shitty communication. Have them actually estranged because they have bad habits, they can be ugly to each other, they can get on each other's nerves. Have the gap be created naturally and have the fame and demon contract prevent a bridge from ever being built again. Genuine sibling shit. Give Big Bro MC actual regrets for how he treated him.
I would have the Yandere thing be new. Because in the new universe his brother is lowkey brainwashed into loving him simply and unconditionally and prettily - no more messiness, no more rough edges hurting each other. MC is no longer a person and is instead an abstract idea of perfection. And it's pretty easy to cut off the vague ideal of a brother's arm or dehumanize him. And it would involve MC realizing that he would have rather had the messiness and hurt and sharp edges than the perfection.
37 notes
·
View notes
Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class.
Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules.
But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point.
I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009.
But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end?
Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:
And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out
133 notes
·
View notes
also, we gonna acknowledge how much streaming services are killing the viability of the music industry? Ashton saying he’s been part of billion stream songs and they pay next to nothing should be REALLY BAD NEWS that has us thinking of the artists who don’t manage to break through with anything like youngblood or she looks so perfect
some maths for you: a billion streams=roughly $3 million for the artist. divide it up between not only 4 people but the co-writers as well and then subtract all the expenses they needed to create it (an album costs around $20k to do cheaply, but for a big hit song you’ll want to spend a lot more on promo etc). I don’t actually know how much would be left, maybe a couple hundred grand each, but the chances of getting more than one of these out per decade are very slim unless you’re one of the top few artists
because BILLION STREAM SONGS ARE NOT THE NORM for most artists. 5sos have about 10-12 billion streams all up I think? multiply these numbers by 10. they get most of their money from touring, all artists do so if you want tours to be accessible for poorer folk we need to make sure our artists can earn a living from their recordings too
6 notes
·
View notes