loptoustome

[loptoustome]

This is an interesting thing. Looks like testimonies of people who left the MAGA movement- how they got into it and why.

Leaving a cult is really hard, so I really respect the people who are speaking from this place.

[loptoustome]

being on the aro spectrum would be a lot easier if being single wasn't made to feel like a literal death sentence

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Warner Bros. have shut down Monolith Productions who were a pillar of the games industry. Responsible for Blood, F.E.A.R, and Shadow of Mordor/War.

Utterly fucking depressing.

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your job is not more important than media from 2005. never forget this.

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I hope the next pope is a gyaru

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me making my oc a worse person

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I think I just found the only reasonable exchange involving two people with opposing views on porn to ever exist on this website

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do you think the Horse ever gets jealous of the Dog's status as "Man's best friend". do you think the Horse is ever like. hey. you domesticated me too. you rode me into battle. i ate food out of your hand and you giggled. are we not besties i thought we were besties

[loptoustome]

[loptoustome]

My favorite art is first sentences of scientific papers, I love reading sentences like "movement is of integral importance to animals" or "snow has long been recognised for its ecological importance" fuck yes so truee

[loptoustome]

hey man. nice regional dialect. mind if i apply some baseless assumptions about your personhood to it? i was also gonna prescribe morality to it as well. if that’s cool with you

[loptoustome]

Something I don't think we talk enough about in discussions surrounding AI is the loss of perseverance.

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Idk I'm just really worried about kids having to grow up in a world where (for a variety of reasons beyond just AI) they're not given the chance to struggle through new and challenging things like we used to.

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i love you trans women and transfems and especially to transfems whose gender isn't strictly woman but don't want to give people the avenue to degender you completely i love you forever and you deserve so much better

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*guy who is very clearly going through. something* oh yknow. just a little tired haha

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wanna be a haunted painting when i grow up

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dont cry ok? there is the sun and there isthe ocean and there are butch gay women

[loptoustome]

if you're in the throes of cosmic despair i cannot recommend museums enough. art or science or history it doesn't matter. oh we're all connected, all of us and everything, throughout all time and space, and no one, no one, no one is alone? awesome. that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure.