#valuable data

[nymdraws]

geordi and data read a 21st century visual novel

[thegreatyin]

fact #1: the scoundrel is a notorious cuddler

fact #2: the scoundrel is extremely shameless about being a notorious cuddler

fact #3: the bandaged scoundrel and the rosette yearner are, in every way but and yet also including literal, The Exact Same Person

fact #4: the rosette yearner was far more repressed than her future self, despite probably sharing many if not all of the same traits and preferences

fact #5: therefore, it is not a significant leap in logic to assume that the rosette yearner was secretly just as cuddly as the scoundrel, if not even moreso because she had no outlet or ability to express this properly

fact #6: the vake yearner is a clone of the rosette yearner.

CONCLUSION: someone needs to cuddle that murderous snowwoman so we can determine whether or not she still carries those notorious cuddler genes™. For Science.

[aquamonstra]

"Mr. Data, what on earth are you wearing?"

"It is a copy of a costume piece from an old Earth cinematic masterpiece, Captain. I related strongly to one of the main characters, and found his mantra to be very affirming."

"I've already tried to get him to take it off, Captain, but he just handed me one too and said that I'm also Kenough."

"I have replicated copies of the garment for you and Commander Riker as well, Captain."

[uselesstaroth]

IDW's habit of dropping half pages that let me read way too deep into a character is a habit that exists

It's a good habit.

It's bad for me.

Also

Good face.

[kyliafanfiction]

While it is true that fandom tends to have a lot more M/M all things being equal, the argument that if Worm was 'mainstream' all these random M/M ships people are imagining would be 'soooooo popular' and outrank all the f/f and stuff...

They miss a key fact.

Worm is one of the fandoms that would still have more F/F - because there are fandoms that have significantly more F/F than M/M. OUAT, Supergirl, The 100, She-ra, just off the top of my head. And one of those things those shows have in common is: Female Lead. What they also have in common is a LOT of female characters for the MC to be paired with, and a very popular ship for the MC. In some cases, that ship is canon (Catradora, Clexa) and in some cases it's not canon and often has the writers accused of queerbaiting (Swan Queen, Supercorp)

Yes, there'd be a lot more M/M if Worm was mainstream, but Smugbug would still be the juggernaut ship, and Wolf Spider still pretty damn large too. Because Worm has a lot of female characters for Taylor to play off of, in terms of shippable.

[rorydrawsandwrites]

So Google's been trying to smother uBlock in their browser. Had to go into my extensions' settings to turn it back on, I thought I couldn't

Wow. Scummy

[dickgreyson]

one of my essays from back when i studied philosophy is being put into a good answers guide at my university<3 not one of my good ones but

[feralparsnip]

one of the things you will not hear commonly on the internet is that it is like. fine to be an athiest and also a pagan or whatever. like learning about blavatsky et al & finding materialism did change how i relate to my practices a Lot. a lot. and i do think we have a responsibility to for example understand the history and mechanisms of orientalism, etc, bc these 'outside of organized religion' religious practices have an ugly and exploitative history and we have to look at that if we are to salvage anything meaningful from the project of paganism. i mean this to you so sincerely. if you think of yourself as a witch this post is for you. i lived there for ten years i'm not throwing stones from outside the house here

but last night i lit my candles on my little altar to death and it's like. what she means to me has changed as i come to understand the world. i think she's the progressive force, in truth. i am trying to love the world enough to see it for true

but the other other interesting thing to me is that. seeing the world more clearly doesn't change what i'm getting out of the experience very much. and i guess i thought it would.

i think if we were to dismantle the systems of power wherein religion is used for control (and believe me, paganism is not exempt from these pressures due to it's largely decentralized nature), that religion might just be like. dance. like you can get fancy with it or not but it moves you because it moves You. like it may one day just be a kind of art

anyway. the gods don't have to speak to you. in truth i don't think they are speaking to anybody because i don't think they are real. and if you're looking at paganism or 'witchery' or whatever and wanting to start or expand your practice. i am telling you directly that you don't have to use it to escape from the world. it is so tempting to find some magical system to simplify your model of the world but you don't actually have to use this to hide. it can be the place you love the world enough to see it for true. or love yourself enough to see what you need. take the parts that work and discard the parts that don't & remember you need some chemicals to cast fireball in real life.

[flaskoflethe]

While on leave at the moment, we're not that far from returning to work. Given that we work in data science and development, and that part of what pushed our burnout was the literal abominations we were being asked to make using llm's, it seems prudent for us to start getting back into the swing of things technically. What better way to do this than starting to look through what's easily available about DeepSeek? It's, unfortunately, exactly what you'd expect.

We're not joking. The literal first sentence of the paper from the company explicitly states that recent LLM progression has been closing the gap toward AGI, which is utterly, categorically, epistemically untrue. We don't, scientifically, have a sufficient understanding of consciousness to be able to create an artifical mind. Anyone claiming otherwise has the burden of proof; while we remain open to reviewing any evidence supporting such claims, to date literally nothing has been remotely close to applicable much less sufficient. So we're off to a very, very bad start. Which is a real shame, because the benefits and improvements made to LLM design they claim in their abstract are impressive! A better model design, with a well curated dataset, is the correct way to get improvements in model performance! Their reductions in hardware hours for training are impressive, and we're looking forward to analyzing their methods - a smooth training process, with no rollbacks or irrecoverable decreases in model performance over the course of training are good signs. Bold claims, to be clear, but that's what we're here to evaluate. And the insistence that LLM's are bringing AGI closer to existence mean we have sufficient bias from the team that we cannot assume good faith on behalf of the team. While we assume many, or even most, of the actual researchers and technologists are aware of the underlying realities and limitations of modern "AI" in general and LLM's in particular, the coloring done by the literal first sentence is seriously harmful to their purpose.

While we'd love to continue our analysis, to be honest it doesn't support it? Looking at their code it's an, admittedly very sophisticated, neural network. It doesn't remotely pose a revolution in design, the major advances they cite are all integrating other earlier improvements. While their results are impressive, they are another step in the long path of constructing marginal improvements on an understood mechanism. Most of the introduction is laying out their claims for DeepSeek-v3. We haven't followed the developments with reduced precision training, nor the more exact hardware mapped implementations they reference closely enough to offer much insight into their claims; they are reasonable enough on face, but mainly relate to managing the memory and performance loads for efficient training. These are good, genuinely exciting things to be seeing - we'll be following up manu of their citations for further reading, and digesting the rest of their paper and code.

But this is, in no way shape or form, a bubble ender or a sudden surge forward in progress. These are predictable results, ones that scientists have been pursuing and working towards quietly. While fascinating, DSv3 isn't special because it is a revolution; it simply shows the methodology used by the commercial models, sinking hundreds of billions of dollars a year and commiting multiple ongoing atrocities to fuel the illusion of growth, isn't the best solution. It will not understand, it CAN not. It can not create, it can not know. And people who treat it as anything except the admittedly improved tool it is, are still techbros pushing us with endless glee towards their goal of devaluing labor.

[intertexts]

doing feederwatch this year btw ! u should do feederwatch also!!!

[kaus-quietis]

Greetings, Anon! Thank you for your questions. I have to admit, even in the past, I refrained from posting reactions or speculations as BSD chapters release, but you already knew that, so I will indulge you. I'll answer each part of your ask. BSD ch113 thoughts below, manga spoilers ahead.

♠ "What was your raw reaction?" It was not a calm, quiet one, I can tell you that. No, in fact I screamed with excitement as if I was in a Roman amphitheatre and my favourite gladiator just got back up on his feet, out of sheer force of will, grinning and sweaty. My scream was the fastest way I could "verbalize" the fact that I was overjoyed to see him alive again, even if it's in the 15th century, and on top of that he seemed to be some kind of spy monk all chained up and having what seems to be a ridiculous amount of fun getting caught and discussing with Bram. This is all very in-character for him.

♠ "Was that something you expected?" Absolutely not. Yes, yes, I truly did not expect a jump back in time and this infobomb drop, despite the fact that we did get a few hints that Fedya seemed present at past events when all the other character really appeared younger than him (near the end of S4ep3, where on a rooftop Fedya says "It's not V, it's Five" and I am seriously like bruh I give up what I want to say is I need more data to work with, what am I supposed to do with this, rationally speaking?). However, we can't yet extract anything conclusive from this. Is he ageless? A time-traveler? Immortal? Does he revive? When was he born? Was he born at all or created differently somehow? Is he of BSD's world, or an external one (Beast liveaction finale anyone?)? Is this all within the Book and he's just… idk flipping the pages? Anything is possible and I refuse to spend a lot of time working with incomplete data. This is not very follower-friendly (as in, my blog is basically inactive in-between), I know and I apologize, but if after many chapters there will be something worthwile to add to my essay (with what Fukuchi said in ch113 I already have important stuff to add), under those circumstances I will consider writing an update. It's not yet time.

♠ "<Was that> something you felt different for the characterization we all made for Fyodor?" Hmm, I would hesitate to refer to a characterization "we all made" for him (I wish! T o T), because my analysis and blog are but a tiny tiny part of the fandom (I think…? I wonder about my Fedya essay's reach or influence sometimes). But let's say here we refer to one that comes close to what I tried to show in my essay. In that case, I would say that there is nothing to fear here in this chapter, but it's very understandable to have massive trust issues at this point. We went through a miserable, miserable time when the previous ones made the guy who visually memorized a full deck of used cards somehow not notice Chuuya wearing contacts and fake vampire teeth, despite knowing the vampire race since… well, the 15th century! I cannot even begin to describe what I felt reading ch111.5-112, I was beyond repulsed. Lovers of "villain" characters understand the following thing well: in most media, our fav has to lose, he has to die or disappear at some point, with rare exceptions. I, too, know this well, but that was no compelling way to solve BSD's villain threat. I still don't know how BSD will wash away that narrative stain, as I consider it, but then again one of the reasons we love this manga is that it keeps us on the edge of our seats and the most absurd yet fun turns can happen out of the blue. We can reasonably ask ourselves: ok, what is the purpose of showing Fedya's backstory now? If it's for build-up, we can already start grinning like Cheshire cats. What could possibly be next? I'm cautiously optimistic, things look in-character and good to me. Very good, in fact.

♠ "Or do you think it is later on going add some depth to his character?" Backstories are shown usually for a very clear purpose. We don't know the purpose yet, but if it's done well, then… then my whole essay could be at risk lmao (and I love this sensation). New info could add so much depth to his character, in fact, that his previously observed traits could gain new meanings, or even contradictory ones. Whichever it will be, I think it's pretty safe to bet on "his backstory will be very relevant".

♠ Bonus: even if I enjoy going "full analytical" and enter conference speech mode when asked, I am driven by strong emotions, by which I want to say – I am not immune to assassin/spy monk Fedya chained up like that and having the time of his life again. I missed seeing him entertained like that, and his current …………. visual representation in the.. uh. ..chapter, yeah, well, it's doing things to my Depeche Mode-worshipping heart.

Anyway, to conclude with some facts we know as of now:

a. Fedya and Bram are inside the Bran Castle, close to the Romanian city of Brașov, "deep in the Carpathians" although not built at high altitude itself. It's basically a fortress built between 1377-1388, with several later additions. The BSD representation of it is very accurate to how it looks today. It's near perfect, actually, I applaud.

b. Bram mentions King Matthias, and in this context that can only mean Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary for 1458-1490. The meeting between Fedya and Bram thus happens some year during his reign, when Transylvania was still part of the Kingdom of Hungary. What is still strange to me is that I can't pinpoint Bram's exact position, as in… were his people independent? Or avoided? I feel like I need to re-read past Bram-related chapters to think about this.

c. Nevermind Bram, the things that Fukuchi says, those are the real goldmine here, but the gold is still… encrypted? I mean: Fedya made the DoA plan (more than confirmed now), and because Fukuchi asked for the condition to keep casualties under 500, Fedya respected that and we got entertained for like half of the whole BSD manga: using coin bombs for terror, for economic/political destabilization, using the vampire infection to avoid further violence, these things. The more you think about it, the more insane it gets. Since Fedya agreed to this condition, it means causing (more) deaths and violence were expendable things to him. (But imagine this: Fukuchi said "I want max. 500 deaths" and Fedya said "Yeah I can do that", now if Fukuchi would've said "I want max. 2 deaths" I really believe Fedya would've still said "Yeah I can do that". What can't he do, especially since murder for murder's sake isn't his goal?). This is in perfect harmony with his "necessary deaths only" approach so far, and much much more. There are far more implications in what Fukuchi said, which I won't type out here now. Gotta keep them and build around them for a future analysis update.

This was a rather long read, but still, I hope this satisfies your curiosities, Anon. *bows dramatically & disappears in a borderline insufferable ENTP way*

[lucysweatslove]

I got my new car today!!! I haven’t actually driven it yet. Because new things are scary for me and it takes me a little while to get used to something like driving a new car, I wanted to drive it around my parents’ a little before going in a busy road. Rob said it has “responsive break” and i wanna get that “feel” down before I’m in heavy traffic. I like it though and am very grateful and excited!!

Being at my parents’ hasn’t been too triggering this time around. Usually there are some kind of comments about my body or what I’m eating, but we have such a short turn around this year that thankfully it hasn’t been too bad…

Did have to listen to my mom talk about this guy who has multiple myeloma (my mom has a precursor to MM) and apparently is in “full remission” using an antiviral but it came back because he got the covid vaccine…. Tried to explain why that’s probably not true actually but you know… I think she just desperately wants there to be simple/easier answers to the cancer she might develop, which I get, but I also feel like this is how misinformation takes roots.

(We don’t have a perfect system here in the US by far, but we aren’t lagging behind in the cancer treatment realm…. If antivirals worked to cure MM, there would be research on it… and people would do it… contrary to popular belief, Big Pharma isn’t pushing ineffective expensive drugs to steal your money and keep you sick…drugs are ridiculously expensive, but it’s not malicious… insurance companies are far more malicious for refusing coverage than the pharma companies imo)

Also listening to some people talk about pot shop workers (specifically managerial roles) not deserving to be paid a certain amount, all the gender critical bs, like yall, I don’t like government regulations in general and I have my views on how we attempt legislating morality and why it doesn’t work, but like…… when you use that argument to justify why people who “don’t have any education and just know drugs” (not a real quote just a paraphase) don’t deserve to be paid a certain amount, AND you don’t use it to say that like, gov shouldn’t restrict access to health care like abortions and gender affirming care… that’s not “government shouldn’t legislate morality,” that’s “government should legislate the morality I agree with” which is… the same thing you’re complaining about the “other side” doing.

Especially the gender stuff. It takes very little actual energy to use somebody’s preferred, correct pronouns. Affirming care literally saves lives. When you spend a lot of energy and time lobbying against these things, it really just tells me how uncomfortable you are with the idea that somebody could have a different life experience than you. The only person who should be spending that much time and energy caring about those things… should be the person themselves. Partners or family ofc should care too, but in a “how do we support this person so they can live a fulfilling life” way, not in a “i can’t handle anybody having a different lived experience than me” kind of way.

And also if you’re gonna complain about federal spending and budgets, can you at least acknowledge the ridiculous defense budget? Even if your viewpoint is “I don’t know how we can realistically and safely scale that back,” just like… recognize how little the government actually spends on programs like VA health care in relation to the massive defense budget. We rank third in the world for per capita military spending… I’m not saying you need answers on how to solve anything, but if you’re gonna criticize the drops in the bucket, acknowledging that they are in fact drops in the bucket comparatively would be nice.

[sincerely-sofie]

I'm not sure how weird of a question it would be to ask, or if it's one i should ask, but if you could choose to hallucinate one of them again without any kind of drawbacks just to talk with them, would you? And who would you talk to?

Not a weird question at all, and it's one I've actually asked myself a lot over the years! If I were able to hallucinate one of my old Brain Roommates™️ again, but without the intense anxiety that is required for me to hallucinate in the first place or the actual damage to my brain that hallucinations do, I'd be very, very interested in it. However, my answer for who I would speak to in this hypothetical scenario has changed throughout the years.

Originally, I wanted to talk to the Black Clock. He was the most consistently distressing hallucination, and was a sort of manifestation of my intense perfectionism and high standards for myself. I wanted to ask him if I was enough. It was a question that haunted me for years, and either answer scared me. If I was enough, then that meant I wasn't living up to my potential and that I was "sinful, irredeemable filth" according to the script I told myself back then. If I wasn't enough, then I didn't deserve anything good and I was an active blight on all that I loved, somehow. Nowadays I don't have anything to say to him. I'm enough for myself and I'm enough for God. The opinion of some misfiring synapses doesn't matter.

After that, I wanted to speak to the Red Woman. She expressed remorse after I found my first set of medications that partially stopped me from hallucinating, and she apologized for what she put me through and told me goodbye. I held her the night I took those medications while she cried and said she was scared to die. I never saw or heard from her again, at least as a hallucination. I wanted to tell her I forgave her and that I hoped she was okay, wherever she was. I don't have that same anxiety over the speculative mortality of the voices in my head anymore, so I wouldn't say I would want to talk to her again. There's not much point to it in my eyes. She hurt me and said she was sorry. That's a full sentence. I don't need to open it up for anything else.

Later on, I wanted to talk to the Lime Hands because, in a very bizarre exchange, he expressed to me he was depressed and didn't want to exist. I wanted to see if he was feeling any better, as strange as it was to ask that of a hallucination. Now, though, I hate that freak and make no apologies for what the dang thing put me through, and the only way I'd want to reunite with him is in some wonderland scenario where I could tangibly interact with him. And that's only because I'm punching that sucker's teeth in and breaking his pinky fingers.

As for the present day answer: If I were to choose any of my hallucinations to speak to without consequence, I think I'd like to speak to Doc Brown, or the Marigold Girl.

Doc Brown was the most cordial of the hallucinations and actually stepped in to advocate for me on occasion when the pain was really bad. I liked him a lot. He was a friend to me when I had very few people to talk to. We joked together and he gave me advice and words of comfort during some of the worst nights of my life. I think it'd be fun, in a very surreal way, to catch up with him— ask him how he's doing, how he's been, if he and the Marigold Girl are still buddies and if the Red Woman and him ever got over the hump of their flirtatious hatred for each other and actually became an item. It'd be a nice little send off to the guy. He was one of the first hallucinations I stopped experiencing, and his disappearance was very abrupt. I'd like to be able to say goodbye properly, thank him for his help, and smile and kindly say I hope I never see him again.

(also, the guy's whole shtick was anxiety over disease / contamination and the possibility of me infecting others with whatever bug I caught at the time. I stopped hallucinating him WAY before 2020 and I think he would lose his mind if I told him about COVID-19. That was his time to shine and he missed it. Poor thing.)

The Marigold Girl was a very difficult figure for me to handle when I was hallucinating. On the one hand, she was a lovely, if somewhat unsettling, little girl. She liked it when I read books and explained the plots to her. She always wanted to be held. She was scared of the dark. She adored my stuffed animals and would whisper to them while I was trying to sleep. I enjoyed being around her for the most part, but she was a very weepy hallucination, and the Black Clock would deal out punishment without fail whenever she cried— it was always my fault somehow, and so I suffered the consequences of her being a bit of a crybaby.

Looking back, I feel bad for her. She was a good kid, or at least as good of a kid as an unhealthy cocktail of neurochemicals in a weary brain can be. She once said she didn't want to cry all the time and wished she knew how to stop because I got in trouble because of it. I think it would be nice to comfort her and tell her it wasn't her fault that I'd be hurt. She couldn't control things anymore than I could back then.

I'd really like to show her the new stuffed animals I've collected over the years and read her one of the short stories I've written. I think she'd like Winter Came and Went if she didn't have to worry about the consequences of crying during the sad parts. She'd definitely enjoy Bibbidy Bee Goes to the Library. If possible, I'd like to ask what her favorite color is. I think she'd have a lot of fun answering, and I'd like being able to get to know this part of my psyche that was scared to let herself show any sadness for fear of hurting others with it.

[chronomally]

drop the paper? 🅱️ls?

If you're talking about the one that discusses using AI to make decisions about which unhoused people get access to housing, it's available for free here

[galaxseacreature]

Another day trying to convince my fellow biologists of the value of adding a single, complete English sentence to their list of field measurements and raw observations. To pull everything together. To state their conclusion, even