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Wild that folks keep saying beekeepers abuse bees as if bees are not both venomous flying animals and fully unionized

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Actually, I remember the last time I was in Paris and I went to a random bookstore, I was like "what the fuck, this bookstore is extremely good. Did I just get lucky?" but that was a while back, and I was the kind of annoying person who just assumes things are better in France at the time. I've now gone to a few bookstores in the last month, and they are almost uniformly high quality in terms of literature selection.

What is going on? The thing that stood out most, to me, as someone who often reads literature in translation, is just what a fantastic selection is available. I saw things translated from Turkish and from Central European languages that I know don't exist in English translation, and not at specialty places, just at random bookstores. They're well-regarded bookstores, but they're not like famous ones that are tourist attractions that you would actually visit the city for (Powell's) or gargantuan assaults on the senses (Strand).

Does French publishing have a much richer tradition of publishing literature in translation?

This would be so cool if only I was not so fucking slow at reading in French.

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Inspired by this post by Nostalgebraist, posting again so it can be reblogged without directly dumping a wall of text onto your dash. You should definitely read their write-up of the situation if you haven't already, it's absolutely fascinating.

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Anon is curious about the overlap of these demographics, though the results will obviously be skewed somewhat by the fact that a lot of autistic and LGBTQA+ people use tumblr. Every autistic person anon has met has been LGBTQA+ in some way.

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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stoned and autistic at a party trying to make conversation: I find the comparative lifespan of organisms so interesting. Spiders are comparatively long lived animals. Female black widows can live up to 3 years but their male counterparts rarely live four months. Some tarantulas live upwards of 20 years. The longest lived spider was around 43 years old when she was cruelly assassinated by a parasitic wasp. Domestic rats have a lifespan comparable to female black widows. To put things into perspective, there are spiders that remember a pre-pandemic world but it is likely every rat on earth was born post-COVID. There could be a spider out there born when Reagan was in office.

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starting a compilation of my favorite "no thank you" buttons from when they want you to subscribe so bad

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The central joke of the Ulysses Ogre meme hinges on the Ogre holding themselves to unreasonable standards by expecting to fully grasp one of the most famously difficult works of the 20th Century after only a single reading, which just doesn't work if you substitute your favourite video game, because frankly, your favourite video game is not Ulysses – but to be fair, the overwhelming majority of books are not Ulysses either. There's probably a video game somewhere out there that's as textually challenging as Ulysses, and it's probably some random-ass RPG Maker game from 2006 with an author whose name is a dick joke and a present fandom of approximately eleven people.

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@hues-of-lou

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In Nederlandse spreektaal betekent het werkwoord "pinguïnen"..

Je tas op de grond tussen je benen houden terwijl je staat

Met een groep mensen dicht tegen elkaar staan voor warmte

Waggelen

Iets anders

Nooit van gehoord

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We have two bedrooms and we occasionally share a bed, mostly because I just have a more restful sleep alone. Plus both of us have very different sleep schedules, so we're both totally fine with it.

For the purposes of this poll, "partner" includes anyone you would personally consider a long-term partner, whether you're romantically or sexually involved or not. "Sharing a bed" means you sleep in the same bed at the same time.

Anon and their fiancé sleep in separate bedrooms and they're both happier that way, so they're curious if others feel the same.

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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Pixel Art by Philipp A. Urlich

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For all of the northerners that stood up for Texas during our freeze and said, "Don't make fun of them, they've never dealt with this before. Their infrastructure isn't made for snow and freezing."

This one is for you.

Where I live 108°F with 80% humidity with no wind is normal.

Pacific North West is dealing historic best waves 35-40°C or 95-105°F.

First of all. Don't make fun of them for bitching about the heat. Just like Texas isn't built for a freeze and our pipes burst, Pacific North West isn't built for heat and a lot of their homes don't have AC.

If you live somewhere with a high humidity like 80+ HUMIDITY IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. The "humidity makes it feel cooler" is a lie once it gets beyond a point.

If you live somewhere with a lower humidity, misters are nice to cool off outside.

Once you get over 90°F (32°C) a fan will not help you. It's just pushing around hot air. (I mean if you can't afford a small AC unit because they're expensive as hell, by all means a fan is better than nothing).

If you have pets, those portable AC units aren't safe. If your pets destroy the outtake thing, it'll leak CO2. Window units are safer.

Window AC units will let mosquitoes or other small bugs in. Sucks, but that's life.

Now is not the time to me modest. If you have to cover for religious reasons, by all means. If you don't, I've seen people wear short shorts and a swim top. It's not trashy if it keeps you from getting heat stroke.

If you do have to cover up for religious reasons, look for elephant pants or something similar. They're made with a breathable material.

Shade is better than no shade, but that shit it just diet sun after some point. Don't think shade will save you from heat stroke.

I know the "drink your water" is a fun meme now, but if you're sweating excessively you need electrolytes. Drink Gatorade, Powerade, or Pedialite PLEASE. I don't care if you're fucking sitting in one spot all day. That shit WILL save you from heat stroke.

Most importantly. RESEARCH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEAT STROKE AND HEAT EXHAUSTION PLEASE!

If you're diabetic and can't drink Gatorade, mix water, fruit juice, and either lite salt or pink salt

If you can afford it, cover windows with thick curtains to insulate the house

If you have tile floors, lay on them with skin to tile contact. If you don't, laying your head on cool counters works too.

If the temperature where you're at is hotter than your body temperature, don't wear heat wicking clothing. Moisture wicking is safe though.

Check your medication labels. Many make you more susceptible to sun and heat

-Room temperature water will get into your body faster. This is something I learned doing marching band in high summer in Georgia, and it saved all of our asses. Sip it, don't gulp it, especially if you're getting into the red; same goes for whatever fluid you're drinking. And just in general drink during the day.

-If you are moving from an air conditioned space to an un-air conditioned space, if at all possible try to make the shift gradual. When my dad and I were working outside and in un-ac houses a few years ago, he'd turn the air down to low in the truck about ten-fifteen minutes before we got where we were going. This way your body doesn't go from low low temps to high temps. S'bad for you.

-If you can, keep your lights off during the day. Light bulbs may not generate a lot of heat, but the difference is noticeable when it gets hot enough. I literally only turn my bedroom light on in the evening when it gets too dark.

Don't be afraid to just like... pour water on yourself if you need to. The evaporation will cool you off.

Put your hand to the cement for 15 seconds. If you can't handle the heat, it'll burn your dog's paws. Don't let them walk on it.

Dogs with flat faces are more prone to heat stroke. Don't leave them out unsupervised.

Frozen fruit is delicious in water.

Wet/Cold hat/handkerchief on your head/neck will help you stay cool.

Pickle juice is great for electrolytes! You can even make pickle juice Popsicles!

Heat exhaustion is more, "drink water and get you cooled off." Heat stroke is more "Oh my god call 911."

Image Description provided by @loveize

[Image description: an infographic showing the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke. The graphic is labeled "Heat Dangers: First Warning." Signs of heat exhaustion: faint or dizzy, excessive sweating, cool, pale, clammy skin, rapid, weak pulse, muscle cramps. If you think you or someone else may be experiencing heat exhaustion, get to a cool, air-conditioned place, drink water if conscious, and take a cool shower or use cold compress. Signs of heat stroke: throbbing headache, no sweating, red, hot, dry skin, rapid, strong pulse, may lose consciousness. If you think you or someone else may be experiencing heat stroke, call 911. End description]

Be safe.

-fae

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someone made a fanfic of that "Harry runs over Light with his Car" post, and it's actually amazing

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Worst part of popular left wing AI discourse online is that there's absolutely a need for a robust leftist opposition to use of cognitive automation without social dispensation to displaced human workers. The lack of any prior measures to facilitate a transition to having fewer humans in the workplace (UBI, more public control over industrial infrastructure, etc) is a disaster we are sleepwalking into - one that could lock the majority of our society's wealth further into the hands of authoritarian oligarchs who retain control of industry through last century private ownership models, while no longer needing to rely on us to operate their property.

But now we're seemingly not going to have the opposition we so desperately need, because everyone involved in the anti-AI conversation has pretty thoroughly discredited themselves and their movement by harbouring unconstrained reactionary nonsense, blatant falsehoods and woo. Instead of talking about who owns and benefits from cognitive automation, people are:

Demanding impossibilities like uninventing a now readily accessible technology

Trying to ascribe implicit moral value to said technology instead of the who is using it and how

Siding with corporations on copyright law in the name of "defending small artists"

Repeating obvious and embarrassing technical misconceptions and erroneous pop-sci about machine learning in order to justify their preferred philosophy

Invoking neo-spiritual conservative woo about the specialness of the human soul to try to incoherently discredit a machine that can quite obviously perform certain tasks just as well if not better than they can

Misrepresent numbers about energy use and environmental cost in an absurd double standard (all modern infrastructure is reliant on data centers to a similar level of impact, including your favourite fandom social media and online video games!) to build a narrative AI is some sort of malevolent spirit that damages our reality when it is called upon

It's a level of reactionary ignorance that has completely discredited any popular opposition to industrial AI rollout because it falls apart as soon as you dig deeper than a snappy social media post, or a misguided pro-copyright screed from an insecure web artist (who decries a machine laying eyes on their freely posted work while simultaneously charging commission for fan-art of corporate IPs... I'm sure that will absolutely resolve in their favour).

It would be funny how much people are fucking themselves over with all this, except I'm being fucked over to, and as a result am really quite mad about the situation. We need UBI, we need to liberate abundance from corporate greed, what we don't need is viral posts about putting distortion filters on anime fan-art to ward off the evil mechanical eye, pointless boycotts of platforms because they are perceived to have let the evil machines taint them, or petitions to further criminalize the creation of derivative works.