#Plasticizer Market

[foldingfittedsheets]

Vegan leather is a plague.

[streetmatt]

At the flea market.

By Matti Merilaid.

[kisiel-z-kosmosu]

I CANT BREAK FROM THE ADDS

they are everywhere !!!

I am not buing shoes hgghrhrhrh.

LINK to my stl files you can download and print for only 0.000 money This is my first 3d model that i actually printed :D I choosed pink cuz it's on my discord avatar for a long time now. Honestly glueing and painting were the hardest part, but that's my mistakes, next time i def buy acrylic paint i need instead of using whatever markers/paints are in house.

[hordeof10000horses]

cat

cat

cat

car

car

car

2008 Toyota Corolla

Ford Ranger

Car

Car

[bajaja-blast]

ik we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but ngl some of y’all are making me feel like a wanted criminal for liking Cracker Island, Song Machine & Humanz :/

[gomzdrawfr]

nikraven has me chewing on fucking cardboard ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

giggling kicking my feet

[aneverydaything]

Day 2364, 12 December 2024

Washed up and barely afloat- how I feel the day after a trip to the German Market in Birmingham.

[wordsandrobots]

Jotting down a half-formed thought.

Some years ago, I went to an XML conference in Oxford (that makes it sound fancy but off-season college food is universally terrible) and one of the speakers was a gentleman who worked for Wikipedia. And one of the things he said was that what he aspired to, with Wikipedia, was something akin to the ship's computer in Star Trek, where you could go, "Computer tell me about pottery on Bronze Age Cyprus," and it would return all the information you could want. An aspirational idea, to be sure, and not an aim I object to, but an example of how fiction shapes what we want out of technology.

A couple of weeks ago, my workplace held one of our semi-regular informal meetings about so-called 'AI' and the impact on our industry, which I generally avoid because I am an avowed Luddite when it comes to this latest round of 'wonderful new technologies' being promoted at break-neck pace by investment capital. My contributions to the meetings when I do go are generally of a wet-blanket kind and this time was little different even though we were talking about 'fears around AI', because a well-intentioned colleague started the discussion with Roko's Basilisk and the Paper-Clip Maximiser. Politely speaking, these are two rather implausible scenarios concerning the creation of general artificial intelligences, which do not have much bearing on the subject of large-language models and supposedly-assistive automation. I bit my tongue a lot, despite finding myself talking more than usual, mostly on account of thinking that focusing on these fantasies is a distracting waste of time when 'AI' tools are being deployed willy-nilly in efforts to devalue people's labour, to say nothing of exposing the tech sector's childish disregard for creativity as a part of human experience.

I fear the loss of skill and information at scale as a consequence of another capitalistic fool's gold-rush far more than I do hypothetical non-human intelligences we are not close to creating, and that would reside within extremely vulnerable infrastructure if we did.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about Issac Asimov and the laws of robotics, his set of impossibly vague rules created to drive stories on the basis of finding all the ways they would go wrong.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

(Please appreciate how many philosophical concepts an AI would have to understand in order for these to be practicable.)

And that got me thinking about 'robot' stories in general, all the way back to Karel Čapek and Rossum's Universal Robots, which is of course not about thinking machines at all but rather the proletariat, 'robota' meaning as it does 'forced labour'. Decades later, Luke Skywalker and his uncle were buying slaves made from steel and gold to work on their farm. 'Robot' displaced 'automaton' in popular language, and injected its original, class-structure meaning into unthinking clockwork. Fictional metal robots become beings capable of thought. Alien, yes, yet in some measure conscious and subject to all sorts of ethical considerations and imagined horrors. We've largely left behind Čapek's conception of human-like beings assembled from separately grown organs, the production-line person, but his tale of a genocidal revolution persists.

Discussion around automation and 'AI' seems to me to be soaked in a morbid desire for a 'safe' intelligent servant. Science fiction has shaped how we hold those discussions, naturally, directing our concerns at 'robot uprisings' and being 'surpassed' in some way (or all ways). It goes without saying that a great deal of the fiction functions as metaphor. To pick an example I've just finished rereading, Ann Leckie's Ancillary books are as much commentary on real-world imperial practices as they are an exploration of personhood and how general AI might be implemented per se. Unavoidably so. Will we ever extract 'robot' from Čapek's work and the industrial models that shaped his writing?

Perhaps not, but this isn't really the question I'm concerned with here. No, what I'm grappling with is the appeal of having an intelligence serve our whims. From the simple humanisation of tools, both in the sense of 'prompts' and 'hints' taking a conversational tone, to the desire to supplant actual humans with pliable alternatives that has Elon Musk wheeling out a bloke in a leotard like he's restaging The Five Doctors, it's a thread that has become wrapped around how we engage with . . . well, with technology. With constructions meant to assist us, that more often than not cannot replace us (yet) and require us to assist them.

In reality, the ethical questions arising are blunt and ugly. Whose work do we value? By what criteria does society judge who it supports and who it discards? How is remote technology used to circumvent natural, negative human responses to violence? Did those companies pay for that data, and do we want them to be able to buy it at all?

Still the fantasy persists. "Computer, answer my question." "Robot, do my chores." "AI, you won't rise up and kill me, will you?"

This is not an original observation, to be sure. I am inclined to seek out analyses of these trends in discussion around new tech, although I fear it would mean going back to Frankenstein and working forward. It just struck me, forcibly, that the metaphors for labour discontent and slave uprisings have imposed their own logic on both the fears and the hype around 'AI', be it the real thing or the glorified spell-checkers used to pretend art can happen at the touch of a button.

I have nothing against automation as a tool for making life easier, just as I see no possibility of that promise being fulfilled while capitalistic priorities rule the world. We have to pivot to centring human good first, and that's the core of the struggle.

But I'm also beginning to think we need to seriously ask why we want our tools to be glorified. Why we would want, not just speech recognition as an assistive feature for those who can't type, but specifically something that can speak to us in Majel Barrett's voice and hold an intelligent conversation. Why we are sold objects intended to play-act being 'part of the family' and why those selling them consider it desirable.

I don't suppose the answer will be less depressing than 'owning people is the highest mark of prestige in the societies producing these discussions. Even so, it's probably worth unpicking.

[princehendir]

I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I don't think it's useful to conflate "available for other reasons, but also inadvertently ends up benefiting some disabled people" with "is an accessibility feature". I think that intention actually ends up being kinda relevant here.

[trashogram]

🖤

[subaerial-dweller]

OK it's been 2 seconds since the last one I'm still going, writing isn't working drawing is unreliable so here are my thoughts/headcanons/ideas about Generation Loss Episode 2!

PART TWO: AD BREAKS

So it's not a character I want to talk about but it's related to a character we all know and love: Squiggles. You know through the episodes where he just pops up and gives little comments about what's going on? I was watching Episode 2 yesterday, and one of Squiggle's little things made me go "oh this is certainly an Idea".

"If you're on mobile, buy a computer! Ha ha."

So I was thinking, what if some of the other comments led into little sponsored ad breaks, or TSE merch? For The World watching, I understand it's not us (because we live in a world where Ranboo is aLive and well *sobs*), but the world of Genloss, what if they got ads? They're all sitting down together watching TV with their dinners on their laps, and then Squiggles comes dancing across the screen just before the puzzle is completed (for context, this was when the audience was solving a puzzle to get GL!Niki and GL!Sneeg through the pipe maze). And everyone's enthralled, they're like oh wow they've almost made it, and Squiggles comes and goes "If you're on mobile, buy a computer! *brand name* laptops available now for 10% off if you call today, at 1800-RANBOO, I repeat, 1800-RANBOO! Now right back to Generation Loss, the Social Experiments!"

(I tried to get the 1800 number to be GENLOSS but it has too many letters)

If I could animate, and I really would like to learn just so I can do this, I would make Squiggles do his little thing, and advertise his products. Like when GL!Ranboo is cutting open GL!Slime, he goes "so that's why he's called Slimecicle!" And then, what if he launches into a toy ad targeted at kids for the Operation set of Slimecicle, as pictured in Generation Loss, for only $49.99! Like they have all these little ads, and they're so annoying for the viewer except all of them are so enthralling, so you have houses of Genloss merchandise and sponsored materials, little figurines of all the characters (Slimecicle's comes in an operating bed, and you can get the merry-go-round for an additional 20 bucks). And all of the boxes have Squiggles there in the corner, smiling and saying something either directly related to the product, or a very generic Showfall Media merch tagline.

It's sick and twisted, because you can buy all these things that are so messed up. I'm only thinking about Episode 2 right now, so I won't even go into Episode 3. But like, you can get Frank, and the figurine of Sneeg has a removable hat, and for the clothes room set you get all these customisable options with wigs and shoes and everything. You can get the revolving door that killed GL!Ethan, and it comes with fake blood! Slime kits that turn red if you download a certain mobile app, for an additional cost.

Once again, this post has evolved from "sponsorship and merch" to "fucked up action figures", but there .you go. I just really like the idea of having brightly coloured lumps of plastic designed for kids and megafans with too much money, but it's about the most fucked up things aspects of the show. But it's all haha funny and haha children, and it's a plague. It's everywhere. Target, Toyworld, supermarkets. Like Barbie or Hotwheels, it's one of the big brands. You can get Lego sets where you get two versions of Ranboo's mask. Screaming face Charlie, and happy normal "duude" Slimecicle. It's all plastic, it's all fake as fuck, but the kids love it, the adults love it, it's so marketable and they have Christmas editions, Halloween editions, and maybe ONE edition for some other holiday that doesn't have strictly Christian roots, for the media's sake. "Showfall Media Displays Diversity In Popular New Doll". Just so no one can say they're not inclusive.

[motsimages]

I am preparing an activity for today related to textile history and I wanted to check the good things cotton has as opposed to other fabrics like linen, hemp or wool in case someone asks. And while even wikipedia articles will list all the wonders of these three fabrics, I struggle to find the advantages of cotton.

It's not that cotton is not a good material, but from this research, what cotton has that others don't is good marketing (and well, 19th century slavery as a great support to make all the other textile industries go down).

They rarely list its flexibility, which would be the main difference with linen, for instance, and many of the good things cotton has, linen and hemp also have (but often better). And cotton is not easier to grow, it's quite delicate, only grows in certain weather and requires quite a lot of pesticides (which hemp, for instance, does not, given that it's basically marihuana).

Generally, my conclusion is that these 4 materials are very similar in a lot of ways, with wool being the most distinct of them all (but then, it comes from an animal and not a plant). It's likely there are a lot of interests into maintaining cotton as the main one for some reason that is not "it's hypoalergenic" (so is wool, who knew).

[selamat-linting]

buy local except youre in a global south country so your phone are technically locally made because the metals are found literally several provinces over and the assembly factory is located on the next island.

[fadbucker]

one of the best mcdonaldses near me just remodeled & they took away the customer-side drink fountain (rip) but they did put up these two sculptural portraits that are definitely vintage from the 80s on account of one of them is "The Professor," a short-lived McCharacter of that period. very nice objects.

[istherewifiinhell]

[Bolts upright] the weird english person vocab quirk i was thinking of is wally world. Do you want to go to wally world. WALL MART.

[panicbones]

maybe its cuz im on tumblr and not twit which is a hot bed for just petty drama and discourse but i remember remarking that hey revice and geats sure did have a ridiculous amount of drama for their season and some1 argued that thats just what toku fandom is like. but then i havent heard a peep of drama towards gotchard. so hm! maybe it was related to the shows!