#and not just any smartphone

[crochetingwhale]

As a millennial I’m already feeling this way.

It’s become so much harder to use public transport. A few buses still have debit card readers, but if i want to catch a train I need to have a smartphone. ‘Oh, it’s just so convenient, I can do it all on my phone!’ until the battery dies and you’re left stranded with no ticket, standing about with a debit card, two credit cards, enough cash to buy a paper ticket four times over, and no physical way to acquire one.

Its okay they could call me on a rotary faster than i could explain to them I’m old enough to know what a rotary phone is

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[fingertipsmp3]

I’m just gonna say it right now. I don’t think the Mothman is real

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

"Olleh? Olleh???"

(Asks are open!)

[hickeygender]

23 is young and i don't wanna go acting like it isn't but sometimes i see stuff from baby zoomers and i feel fucking ancient. skibidi toilet? i have yet to understand what that's referencing. reality shifting? i was into new agey stuff as a teen and i get the whole law of attraction/manifestation thing, but the rest is all greek to me. a good half of the aesthetics i see talked about online? literally got overwhelmed when i stumbled on the aesthetics wiki last year and i feel like an idiot seeing all these kids list off like 4 different hyperspecific aesthetics to describe themselves 😭 girl what does any of that mean? patiently explain it like i'm 85 when it comes up, or don't expect me to know what the hell you're talking about. i'll just end up smiling and nodding like your out of touch grandpa who loves your energy but is frightened by cellphones and the concept of smartfridges 💀💀💀

[unproduciblesmackdown]

The Joe Iconis Christmas Extravaganza plays December 13-15 and will be live streamed. By: Joey Mervis Dec. 12, 2024

The Joe Iconis Christmas Extravaganza is back to sleigh another day. The iconic holiday tradition is coming back to 54 Below for the 14th time! Joe and his merry band of musical theater punks descend on every square inch of 54 Below with their legendary holiday tradition that brings their insane celebration of all things red and green back to the heart of the theater district. Written by Joe Iconis, directed by John Simpkins, and produced by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, this wild yuletide explosion is part rock concert, part theater piece, and part theme park attraction come to life. Featuring brand new holiday songs, old favorites, a huge cast of musical theater all-stars, tiny elves, enormous reindeer, an inebriated Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and more whiskey-fueled shenanigans than you can shake a candy cane at, it promises to be the hap-hap-happiest holiday hoedown ever seen on stage. Iconis explained that this Extravaganza, like all years, is a mixture of old and new. "We always add new songs and new characters," he said in a break from rehearsals. "That is because there are people who see it year after year- it's a big holiday tradition for some people... however, we always have a bunch of new audience members too. When I write the show I make sure it's a show that's gonna please people- that it has the characters and songs they are expecting to see and is also for people who have never seen the thing before. It's bigger and better every single year." Watch as we go inside rehearsals with Iconis and the whole family!

ft. video in the link with interview material from joe iconis & eric william morris & rehearsal glimpses ft. "celebrate christmas (with me)," mister chestnut's christmas medley (specifically "it's the most wonderful time of the year" for one), & a generous look at liz lark brown's "santa, baby" performance as the virgin mary with the virgin mary dancers

[schnuffel-danny]

local man with a fear of smart technology tries to pick a new smartphone incident (20 dead 15 injured)

[evadingreallife]

Currently stranded on a desert island (phone is at the repair shop) sending messages in bottles into the ocean hoping someone will see them (instagram messages to bff) and writing SOS in the sand with big big stones (tumblr posts). Everything i ever knew has disappeared (i forgor all account passwords). Will my friends find me? (fucking open instagram dms once in a blue moon is it too much to ask)

[shrubberiesaremytrade]

Crowley definitely got a commendation for children’s toys that play music. It is very well deserved.

He had the idea around 1263 after having various Satanic hymns stuck in his head on a loop for five months - they are catchy as Hell, after all - and has been feeding the melodies to toy manufacturers worldwide. 

[muneomon]

Am I getting an old school flip phone to stop doom scrolling and to finally focus on my college work?

Yes. Yes I am.

[storyweaverofgondor]

I don’t like it when people say ‘Everyone has a smartphone’. I don’t have a smart phone. I don’t want one. My mom doesn’t have or want one either. the world shouldn’t be harder to exist in just because i don’t want a piece of tech.

If not having it does make life harder the government should give you one for free with all the most vital apps installed at the very least.

[frenchifries]

it is inconceivable to me that over 70% of people access the internet SOLELY through their phones when the experience of completing any sort of web-based task on mobile is so absolutely agonizing. you people really live like this?

[mayra-quijotescx]

I grow weary of the app-ification of everything.

[beesmygod]

ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:

if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?

what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.

the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?

people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...

all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads

[riverofrainbows]

The move to having you work for free, doing services that were once provided by corporations, is fucking ghoulish.

I just spent a month trying to get my health insurance to issue me a new card with my correct updated photo after my name change. It was impossible to get them to do the services that aren't provided on their motherfucking app. They refused to update my address that i sent them in the letter with the name change. They refused to scan and upload the pass photo i sent them in the letter with the name change. I suppose i can be glad they accepted my name change documents at all. They refused to scan and upload the pass photo i sent them in my second letter. It is apparently impossible to update the mandatory photo on the healthcare card if you don't use the instruments of modern technology.

The move to self checkouts is in the same category. You now have to scan and bill your own groceries. They used to pay someone who was trained in that, and who would prevent you having to figure out how to do the tricky parts of it that you generally need training to do. They used to have someone do this, period. But the corporation would have to pay that person so they'd rather make you work for free.

You can do everything quicker and easier now! Just do it yourself! Just be your own data entry worker, your own cashier, in your free time. Work for free in your free time so corporations don't have to pay a trained worker for that. That sure makes everything easier.

And i know all these services have aspects that do make things easier, but that's just how they lure you in. It wouldn't be impossible to get services at your health insurance, bank, phone provider, fast lines at thw grocery store, if the corporations hadn't spent decades cutting back services and employing less people and training them less and less, so the services got so hellishly shitty that many people do prefer to do it themselves.

But not being able to delegate and having to do everything yourself is how you burn out.

And you working in your free time to subsidise the corporations profit margin by replacing their employees isn't helping anyone in the long run, except the people that are currently at the top of the corporations and rake in incredible money they then tax evade with the help from right wing politicians. So that fundamental services like healthcare and infrastructure like the postal service and telephone lines and food supply get eroded into dust and ashes.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

similar to the greentext stuff - i was visiting with my neighbors and their grandkids were around, and I said to this eight year old, "Hey, you wanna know something cool? I was playing the game when the Endermen came out." and his eyes went wide, like this kid looked like i told him i landed on the moon. His grandma thought it was really funny, and she said she has no idea what i'm talking about, but her grandbabies do, and that's incredible to her.

oh that's fun lmao, when minecraft & that update's existed for more than your whole life, and yknow being that young and like Next Year fr is this huge time scale away, a couple of years is a quarter of your life thus far and like maybe nigh half of the part of your life you actually have longterm memories for....i was checking out this dev's blog's archives about a:tdd's release in 2010 & in one entry they compared the implicitly Roughly concurrent release of Minecraft and i was like hey whoah. forever primarily being a game i've Heard Of more than any more direct exposure so i had no precise sense of [before minecraft release] [after minecraft release] Year 0 there but it's like for sure back in thee day when minecraft was a new thing, huh