puzzleaddictyomz

[puzzleaddictyomz]

So, prefacing this with: There are absolutely transmisoginistic elements to the portrayal of Klinger and his cross-dressing, and I will not try to claim that it is completely positive or unproblematic. That said, I feel like boiling Klinger & his cross-dressing to "a transmisogynistic joke character" is an unfair representation, and want to expand on some of the nuance I see:

Klinger has gotten into his head that he can be sent home on a psychiatric eval if he "acts crazy" enough"

Klinger is desperate enough to go home that he's willing to accept the stigma of a "mentally unfit" discharge (a real US Military discharge category known as a Section 8), and knowledgeable enough about the army to know "wearing women's clothing" is commonly considered evidence of the "insanity" required.

A recurring joke we get from Klinger's attempts to get a Section 8 is the catch-22 of "if you're sane enough to want to be discharged/come up with these complex plans, you're sane enough to stay in the army", and another is the juxtaposition of his attempts to leave the army with how well and seriously he took his job when he was on duty.

taking the bit absolutely, completely seriously

I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that Klinger cross-dressing is 100% a "bit" that characters take seriously, since we do also see it in non-comedic contexts and there are points where it's brought into question whether it is purely an attempt to get out of the army or if there are more reasons he chooses to cross-dress. Klinger is a pretty well-rounded character and we are encouraged to empathize with him on a lot of topics, his presentation included.

When it is presented as comedic, the primary jokes around Klinger's cross-dressing tend to be centered on certain themes:

1. How invested Klinger is in what is supposedly purely a performance - we see him genuinely emotionally invested even without an audience, and there's a repeated juxtaposition of scarcity in wartime with his investment in his wardrobe

2. Reactions and expectations/assumptions from the people around him, which includes some teasing and playful jabs (there are definitely some very specifically transmisogynistic jokes in this category, unfortunately)

3. "wow, what an asshole" presentation of actual negative reactions, usually from Margaret/Frank [main cast "villains"] or one-off side characters who often represent The Army[TM] or wider "normal society" - we see the same pattern in other forms of bigotry and judgement throughout the series as well

Ultimately, I think Klinger's cross-dressing is less of a straightforward "transmisogynistic joke character" and more of a well-meaning but flawed attempt at challenging transmisogyny and queerphobia of the time.

but also a half-joking tl;dr:

tl;dr - Klinger serves cunt because he's extremely dedicated and passionate, and if he's going to try to get out of the army with a "wearing women's dresses proves I'm crazy" discharge then by god he's going to COMMIT

never seen mash why is one of them always serving unfathomable amounts of cunt

like i couldn’t name a single character apart from hawkeye who apparently has nothing to do with the marvel superhero. no idea what the premise of the show is or what it’s about but i know there’s the cheeky bisexual guy (hawkeye i think) and the cuntress who is, according to the few gifsets i’ve seen (correct me if i’m wrong), one of the guys who’s in drag a lot of the time. this is what the characters look like to me

[puzzleaddictyomz]

My typical approach to someone (who ive interacted with previously/expect repeat interactions with) saying “I’m not interested” or “can you avoid that” is basically just “oh, yeah, sorry.” And at most I’ll ask a couple basic general follow ups if I don’t feel like I have enough context to know what I should sdjust moving forward:

1. “All the time or temporary opt-out?” - sometimes ppl just need a break or it’s the quantity not the content alone from a conversation topic or sharing thing; checking in can confirm if it’s a “I don’t mind occasionally, but this has just been too much/is a bad time for this topic” or a harder stop. It also means it’s easier to have a “I don’t want to lose you as a friend, but I am not up to talking as often as we have been” kind of scaling convo than assuming it’s always back and white

2. “Is there something specific to this topic”/“is this a general thing” if I’m not sure what the scope of “avoidance buffer” is - example, someone asks you not to share dog pics with them, I might ask if it’s all dogs (maybe specific breeds are an exception) & if it’s limited to dogs to know if offering cat pics or just avoiding animal pics is the appropriate action moving forward.

And then it’s “cool, thanks for clarifying your boundaries, I’ll try to remember them moving forward” and acting on that intent

Y'all, I'm begging you not to be weird if someone turns you down or says no to pics/sexting/literally anything, even nonsexual things.

It's so uncomfortable when I'm like "no thanks :)" and then I have to spend 15 mins soothing you. Like it's okay if you didn't realize that was a boundry—now you know. It's okay if you misread signals—it happens. Just say "no problem, thanks for letting me know," and move tf on. Deal with that embarrassment in private. It's happened to everyone, and it sucks, I get it. Also, you need to deal with it without making it my continued concern.

[puzzleaddictyomz]

What they don’t tell you about storytelling is that it becomes an instinct over time. You learn how to kind of … intuitively chain events together over time. That doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk, or that you never get stuck on plotbeats, but you have a better time walking yourself out of corners that you as a less experienced writer would have been tempted to abandon your story over. Because you’ve been stuck in similar corners before; you know how you get out now.

I know its frustrating to keep hitting dead ends, but you got this. You’ll learn a little from every roadblock you hit.

[puzzleaddictyomz]

So based on the notes in this post, a lot of people seem to be under the impression that John and Rodney don’t interact significantly in the pilot, but they do! I looked it up, and apparently Hulu has a cut down version of “Rising” and as someone who 1. Watched the show when it first aired and 2. Has the entire SG-1, SGA, and dedicated “Rising” solo DVDs I need to address this! And remind people how much they bond in the pilot before we cut to Hide & Seek:

In the pilot, our first meeting between John and Rodney is the chair in Antarctica! John is confused and has no idea about the Stargate program and “I just sat down” and Rodney has been fighting Carson to try and discover literally ANYTHING about this chair but Carson is terrified! And now there’s this complete stranger with no context, but the moment Rodney asks him to “think of where we are in the solar system” he does and the chair responds and an entire map shows up (shut up, Jack, he has a willing test subject! Shh, this is science time, ugh fine, I’ll go to the stupid meeting, but SCIENCE!)

Then we get them all going through the gate and John is the first up the stairs with Rodney hot on his heels, the stairs lighting up with every step they go and John looks back at Rodney and they share this silent moment of “Are you seeing this? This is so cool! I wanna learn more!” They’re the first to the control room, John turning on the lights and Rodney immediately moving to investigate what the panels are as they wake up.

And they keep sharing these little moments of discovery right up until Rodney realizes how close the city is to completely running out of power and they have to stop, the entire expedition is here to discover and learn more and they can’t anymore and the Wraith are happening and John brings home an entire village and he’s busy dealing with everything for the rest of the pilot…

And Rodney is still doing the discovery thing and John interrupts telling him he needs to know this one thing right now, actually, and Rodney is caught off guard when John has the exact number of possible addresses the symbols could form. “Take away the coordinates you can’t get a lock on, and that’s the one,” John offers and Rodney immediately goes to do so.

The address turns out to be a space gate and Weir says that’s it, they can’t do a rescue mission. And Rodney just looks for a long moment and then goes “Come with me, Major,” and takes John to the Jumper bay. I think this is one of the cut scenes from the Hulu version, but it’s beautiful, we get to see the first time John walks into a Jumper and Rodney is right there behind him “Can you fly it?” And then we see Rodney bring Weir back to the jumper bay to show her, and the jumper is cloaked! Rodney didn’t know it could do that! Also John overrules his trying to name it the GateShip, and Rodney huffs but gives in immediately ‘fine, puddle jumper!’

So John goes on his rescue mission and Rodney is coordinating more exploration of the city, and Rodney supports Weir and John about the decision to attempt a rescue mission. And when they get back he snarks distractedly with Carson about making new friends in another galaxy, and that’s the end of the pilot.

So it really does make perfect sense that as soon as they’ve got time to breathe, of course Rodney and John are right back to “okay, so we were gonna discover more stuff right? Experiments time?”

Credit to sga-mcshep-4ever's beautiful gifset I love all you gif creators so much thank you for providing <3

I think about this scene a lot.

Like, a LOT.

It's the first episode after the pilot, they're not even a team yet and we get this. We get John and Rodney being like this. They had almost no interactions up to this point and then suddenly we get this scene and everytime on rewatch it hits me like a truck.

Up to this point, we have never seen Rodney like this. We have SG-1 McKay in 48 hours being unable to have even one decent conversation with a human being. We have a slightly less terrible Rodney in the recurring instances after.

Even Rodney's opening interaction with Carson in this very episode doesn't go without him insulting his medical degree and then, out of the blue, we get this.

And I always have to think about how did it come to this? How did it pan out? Why did he go to John of all people instead of heading back to Carson going "hey, btw, your gene therapy worked, check this out!" What did it look like? Did he just run up to this flyboy like kids do on the playground when they show off their toy and randomly decide to be friends? Just "MajOR, look what I fOunD" and John going "omg that's so C O oL"? And then they pause and John just goes "hey do you think it can handle it if I swung this metal rod at your face real hard", like. I THINK ABOUT THIS SCENE A LOT.

What prompts Rodney to have an instant connection with this man and trust him to shoot at him? "Oh, believe me, that's not the first thing we've tried." What else have you tried before John shot at you? How long have you two been at this?

It's messing me up how they're instantly on the same wavelength. It's messing me up how happy they both look. How we've NEVER seen Rodney so genuinely, boyishly excited before. How we've never seen him interacting with a person in such a genuine, positive way. How this is the first time we see him having fun with anyone.

Same for John, there's nothing of that sardonic attitude from the pilot, he just looks like a kid and his "Did you SEE that?"-voice when he storms down the stairs is just so heartfelt and giddy. Both of them look like they're having fun with a good friend and it's messing me up.

I think about this scene a lot.

[puzzleaddictyomz]

I feel like this also leaves out a huge factor in why ART goes to MurderBot, which is - the initial problem ART needs solved is:

1. My humans are ??? and I don’t know if they’re safe

2. I am compromised

If you know you’re compromised and under control of a hostile force, do you go straight home where other ships and people with the same vulnerabilities as you live? Or do you go to someone you trust who is also an unknown to the hostile force and has different skills and capabilities as well as vulnerabilities?

ART doesn’t go to Murderbot just to get its humans safe; ART goes to Murderbot to get itself back to a state where it can help recover its humans. Murderbot realizes as well that ART isn’t acting purely on reasoned logic and from an established plan at the start. ART is hurt and confused and goes to the closest help it knows can handle this type of situation, is unlikely to be vulnerable to the same things that might have compromised its own systems, and who is capable of getting ART out from under hostile control as a first step towards a plan.

They can figure out the rest later.

ART and Murderbot have the most insane interpersonal progression. From "Don't you dare lay a hand on my systems" to "Can I perform surgery on you" to "Let's be work buddies" to "Hey sorry I kidnapped you I kinda needed you lol" to "Let's make a bot child that's a self-detonating code bomb" to "Ah shit, our child died. Do you wanna move in together?"

[puzzleaddictyomz]

This is a neat description, but does miss half the picture.

In the “cloud” there are largely 2 main categories: Storage resources and Compute resources

Storage resources are absolutely your “external-hard drive but online instead of plugged-in” type of thing

But there’s also compute resources, which you can think of as like… imagine you have a desktop computer and laptop computer. You use your laptop for a lot of basic stuff, but it’s not as powerful as your desktop and can’t really handle doing 2+ things at once without slowing down.

So, let’s say you wanna upload a video to YouTube or something - it’s a huge, slow process, and your laptop could do it in 12 hours but your desktop can do it faster AND leave your laptop free to keep browsing tumblr, and all you have to do is check the desktop when it’s done to turn it off until you need it again.

That’s the cloud - someone else’s set of computers + storage that you can rent to save some extra files on without having to pay for more hard drives and/or set up access by yourself (stuff like google drive or apple cloud storage) or run some programs using someone else’s hardware (stuff like AWS or Google Cloud etc, and software “running on the cloud”)

[puzzleaddictyomz]

I also appreciate that it didn’t shy away from how actually playing feels, not just Rules As Written dedication solely to the written source material. We see a player character break the bridge puzzle and suddenly a random bit of junk picked up earlier is a Portal gun, with the visual design echoing the video game series. The main party comes up with elaborate plans that fall apart when they roll a 1, and have to pivot into something chaotically improvised to keep the plot going. Picking up the good loot as they go.

They not only knew their source material, they knew and respected the audience of that source while making it accessible to people who aren’t already familiar with D&D. Excellent adaptation!

My favourite thing about the D&D movie is it never stops trying to be a D&D movie even down to the most minute, unsung details. There's initiative order gags (I'll go last!) there's rolling a 1 gags (setting off the trap on the bridge by inexplicably just walking up to it) there's stat gags (nobody had high enough Intelligence to be in danger from the Intellect Devourers). Almost every spell is identifiable, from Xenk using smite to Sofina whipping out Finger of Death. Simon's character arc is about his self-confidence being tied to his mastery of magic because Charisma is the spellcasting stat for sorcerers. The era of movies based on games being afraid of their source material is over.

[puzzleaddictyomz]

I am extremely confused by the use of “apple” here, ‘cause I’ve only ever heard people say it more like “app-uh-lay-shun” or “app-uh-latch-un“

whereas “apple” doesn’t get the same beat between “app” and “L”

Reblog to escape containment, just curious here!!

[puzzleaddictyomz]

This is a large part of why I love using my kindle when reading, thanks to the built-in dictionary, highlights/bookmark, and notes features. (Kindle just bc it’s the ereader I happened to buy; I believe most readers have these features in some form)

When reading a book, if I encounter a word I don’t know I like to try to figure it out by context clues. The problem is that I’m not always confident in my conclusion - if I’m reading on an ereader or my phone, though, I can just highlight the word and the dictionary search will pop up with the word already filled in! You can also type the word into a search engine if you’re reading a physical book or device without this option, of course.

Likewise, I use either digital highlights + note features in ebooks or post-it notes in a physical book to keep track of characters, plot points, or other details if I’m losing track as I go. I’ve also seen ideas like grabbing spare paper to sketch things out before, like diagramming out character connections or mystery clues, though I don’t usually do this myself.

The biggest thing for me, is to highlight things for when I reread the book. Stuff that sticks out as important, or I’ll search (ereader) for a character name or keyword if there’s a twist at the end I want to look for the hints toward on a second read. Then, I know to pay attention next time I read it and get to those points, and I have a better chance to catch the details I might’ve missed before. I’ll also sometimes highlight references or other mentions of things I’m not already familiar with so I can look it up when I’m not in the middle of reading.

Don’t take notes or fold pages or otherwise mess with a physical book you don’t own or are sharing! Grab a notebook or a stack of post-it notes instead, please respect other people’s right to also read the book while it’s in good condition. (If it’s your own book, do whatever you’re comfortable with)

These are all ways to make the next book you read a little easier, and they build up skills you can use to make yourself a little less “stupid” if that’s something you want.

I love reading a book you are slightly too stupid for

[puzzleaddictyomz]

As someone who works in the industry, it’s “Machine Learning” or “generative models”. It’s only “AI” in the sense that it’s an artificial (computer) ‘intelligence’ (extremely limited ability to improve hitting the targeted ‘accuracy’ goal by trying a bunch of adjustments and only accepting the ones that improve the score). Machine learning is a bit more accurate - it’s a machine that is gradually “learning” to be more accurate (it’s trying new things and keeping the ‘good’ changes while discarding the rest)

“Generative AI” is marketing; what it means is “we gave this a bunch of input data, told it what we want, and now it will make new output data based on the statistical patterns it saw in its input and the goal we gave it. If we give it new training data and/or accuracy feedback then tell it to learn new patterns, it will try to improve its output”

Generative models like Chat-GPT or DALL-E are not directly copying art that they’ve been trained on, but they are trying to mimic the patterns they pulled out of what they were trained on. They have a “you’re doing this right” feedback function of some kind, and a very basic underlying logic of “if I am making the feedback negative, undo change” and then they just try to match that.

The big thing, though, is that the generative ai “accuracy” target is not “is the information true to reality” or “does this image make sense to a human and qualify as meaningful art” - in text it’s “does this have accurate grammatical structure?” and in images it’s “do the colors of individual pixels have similar neighbors as the training data gave you”

Is it good at making stuff that fits this condition? Yeah, and it’s getting better with newer versions. But it doesn’t mean it’s getting better at “meaningful art” or “true information” - because that’s never been what it’s built for. (That said, there are efforts to bring “matches reality” accuracy improvements to text generation. It’s not close yet, though)

i’m starting a movement to stop calling this shit “artificial intelligence” cause it’s fucking not. it’s not intelligent, and the things it produces are not informed by logical choices. it doesn’t know how to research sources for you. it doesn’t compose art thoughtfully or meaningfully.

call it machine-generated, text generator, chat bot, but it’s not intelligent.

[puzzleaddictyomz]

it's time to remember again

[puzzleaddictyomz]

this isn't really organized

but I'm a chronic bookworm

also, I am the first two. I strongly prefer physical copies, but when I can't find the book in my small library near me, I will read online.

please reblog so that it's not just a couple of my mutuals who answer this 😅

also I get that it's a convenience thing for some people choosing to read online only, and that reading online is easier for some bc of things like eye problems

[puzzleaddictyomz]

Happy Star Wars day! May the Force be with you!

[puzzleaddictyomz]

Meanwhile in the Appalachian Mountains, basements are strongly connected to working class/mining history. I’m in WV, near Pittsburgh PA - there’s something known as a “Pittsburgh potty” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_toilet

So part of this is: if you live in the Mountains, you can dig a basement and it will be pretty stable. It’s also possible to have a basement with a door to the outside while the other end of the basement is fully underground.

The working class part comes into play hand-in-hand with the Pittsburgh toilets: if you are an industrial worker in a steel mill or a coal miner, you are coming home covered in grime and dust and hazards. So, if you’re a coal miner coming home from work? You come in through the basement, not the front door!

That way, you can drop off your dirty clothes in the basement for cleaning, remove your boots, and generally clean up a little before entering the house and walking on the nice clean floors. If you didn’t have a basement, then how can you keep your home livable instead of covered in coal or steel dust?

This has been fucking with me all week because my coworker has a friend from California who said that if you have a basement it means you're rich??? So

[puzzleaddictyomz]

put in the tags if you're from a n or s or w state or if you're a directionless virginian

[puzzleaddictyomz]

Every now and then I'm reminded Real People with Actual Jobs use tumblr and I've always been legitimately curious what all you weird adults are up to when you're not on this site and with tumblr's New Poll Feature I can finally get an answer! (or the closest approximation of an answer possible with only 10 available options h a)

[puzzleaddictyomz]

6 April 2023 - 15 Nisan 5783

Yes, today is the first day of Passover!

Passover is the week-long festival which celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Some will have a second Seder tonight.

Throughout the days of Passover, many Jews will abstain from eating “chametz,” defined as any food containing wheat, oats, rye, barley, or spelt, save for the unleavened matzos bread. Some also refrain from eating “Kitniyot,” including corn, rice, and beans.

Additionally, the Counting of the Omer begins tonight at nightfall.

The Counting of the Omer is a verbal count with a blessing of each of the seven weeks (49 days) between Passover and Shavuot. The purpose of this is to stand in anticipation of the Torah.

Tonight: Count 1