#and yet they disappointed me

[fuck-john-calvin]

I'm waiting for the big corporations to pss pss pss me like the cat I am with little patience. my local target has yet to try to exploit me with rainbow throw pillows this June. you're behind schedule, capitalists

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[fiendishartist2]

redraw of this post from bunnyfarm's release

kofi|instagram

[shalom-iamcominghome]

[faeriekit]

Thinking about ur 'Christians are fucked' posts for PJO and this is actually brought up in the sister series Magnus Chase. One of the characters is Muslim and just goes "yeah I can make this work" AND SHE DOES

Oh, good for her! That's rad!!

To be fair, I don't think every Christian is theologically fucked if they find out their parent's a Greek god; the Christian Unitarian Universalists I know, for instance, have a level of theological chill I can only envy. You could walk up to them and invite them to a Flying Spaghetti Monster luncheon and they'd thank you for giving them the chance to explore new horizons lmao! Likewise, there are non-strict Christians who do their own things, lapsed Christians who are exploring their own way of moving forward, Christopagans who untie knots I can't even see head nor ass of, etc etc.

Specifically, the most fucked people would be hardcore monotheists: Catholics, probably, and highly conservative Christians whose theology only allows for a singly, omnipotent God. Because, like...fuck. There's a Greek god. That guy made you. That's not a saint, it's not Jesus...these aren't miracles. It's literally just a divine expression of power, in a world where you thought there was only the one, singular God. What the Fuck™

Yeah, everyone has their own views on the nature of divinity and its ability to affect the natural world, but if your thinking is limited to "there is only One holy Guy for literally everyone and everyone," you're going to struggle between a hard place of "completely inflexible thinking" and a rock-hard "absolute proof of another religion being right, or at least somewhat present in the world" lol.

Thanks for popping in! 💜

[arttsuka]

Based on somewhat real events

I spent way too much time drawing this...

But yeah, Ford finally saying thank you

A continuation (kinda)

[saltpepperbeard]

why would david be suddenly ramping up his activity on social media...

why would so much of it be related to the show...

why would he not be stopping the clown train from leaving the station...

why would it be happening so close to october...

why would the cast and crew also seemingly be in on it...

why would it be intensifying and getting more and more suspicious with every passing post...

...if there was NOTHING behind it.

[too-fond-to-be-fearful]

Been thinking recently about the goings-on with Duolingo & AI, and I do want to throw my two cents in, actually.

There are ways in which computers can help us with languages, certainly. They absolutely should not be the be-all and end-all, and particularly for any sort of professional work I am wholly in favour of actually employing qualified translators & interpreters, because there's a lot of important nuances to language and translation (e.g. context, ambiguity, implied meaning, authorial intent, target audience, etc.) that a computer generally does not handle well. But translation software has made casual communication across language barriers accessible to the average person, and that's something that is incredibly valuable to have, I think.

Duolingo, however, is not translation software. Duolingo's purpose is to teach languages. And I do not think you can be effectively taught a language by something that does not understand it itself; or rather, that does not go about comprehending and producing language in the way that a person would.

Whilst a language model might be able to use probability & statistics to put together an output that is grammatically correct and contextually appropriate, it lacks an understanding of why, beyond "statistically speaking, this element is likely to come next". There is no communicative intent behind the output it produces; its only goal is mimicking the input it has been trained on. And whilst that can produce some very natural-seeming output, it does not capture the reality of language use in the real world.

Because language is not just a set of probabilities - there are an infinite array of other factors at play. And we do not set out only to mimic what we have seen or heard; we intend to communicate with the wider world, using the tools we have available, and that might require deviating from the realm of the expected.

Often, the most probable output is not actually what you're likely to encounter in practice. Ungrammatical or contextually inappropriate utterances can be used for dramatic or humorous effect, for example; or nonstandard linguistic styles may be used to indicate one's relationship to the community those styles are associated with. Social and cultural context might be needed to understand a reference, or a linguistic feature might seem extraneous or confusing when removed from its original environment.

To put it briefly, even without knowing exactly how the human brain processes and produces language (which we certainly don't), it's readily apparent that boiling it down to a statistical model is entirely misrepresentative of the reality of language.

And thus a statistical model is unlikely to be able to comprehend and assist with many of the difficulties of learning a language.

A statistical model might identify that a learner misuses some vocabulary more often than others; what it may not notice is that the vocabulary in question are similar in form, or in their meaning in translation. It might register that you consistently struggle with a particular grammar form; but not identify that the root cause of the struggle is that a comparable grammatical structure in your native language is either radically different or nonexistent. It might note that you have trouble recalling a common saying, but not that you lack the cultural background needed to understand why it has that meaning. And so it can identify points of weakness; but it is incapable of addressing them effectively, because it does not understand how people think.

This is all without considering the consequences of only having a singular source of very formal, very rigid input to learn from, unable to account for linguistic variation due to social factors. Without considering the errors still apparent in the output of most language models, and the biases they are prone to reproducing. Without considering the source of their data, and the ethical considerations regarding where and how such a substantial sample was collected.

I understand that Duolingo wants to introduce more interactivity and adaptability to their courses (and, I suspect, to improve their bottom line). But I genuinely think that going about it in this way is more likely to hinder than to help, and wrongfully prioritises the convenience of AI over the quality and expertise that their existing translators and course designers bring.

[somewhereincairparavel]

When I say "defending jason online isn't enough, I need a gun" I'm SO fr i literally left the percy Jackson subreddit community on reddit because I see like atleast 5 comments/posts of people going "jason is so worthless and deserved to die, look! Percy is so much better" atleast 3x times a week.

Don't y'all get fucking bored for posting the same stale ahh shit to get upvotes lmao. The goal is to get internet validation from strangers, and the only way to do that is use Jason (aka one of the most hated characters in pjo) as the punching bag

[disgracefulthings]

If Shang Qinghua also wrote TGCF

Hua Cheng: So if you made this world and everyone in it...

Hua Cheng: That means you made dianxia into the most perfect and ideal being

Shang Qinghua: Actually, that's Mobei-Jun

Hua Cheng: Incorrect

Shang Qinghua: You can't correct me, I'm literally your go-

Hua Cheng: Absolutely incorrect!

[achaotichuman]

Cassian strikes me as the kind of guy who would physically overpower Nesta in order to cake her face at their wedding.

[radioroxx]

in. clover lives aus or aus where they choose to live in the underground whatnot. i think more ppl should play with the idea that their friends know Jackshit About Humans. please and thanks

[polarsirens]

hooo

[wolfythewitch]

Does anyone in your school/class know you make animatics in youtube?

Yeah LOL

I don't know how it spread but a bunch of my classmates follow me. Once my design professor asked me if I got enough sleep cause they saw me upload an animatic at 5am haha. A professor once put my animatics up in a neighboring classroom to show her class and my classmate dragged me out of my own classroom to see

[strawandstream]

I think the worst part of Oswalda's design that they clearly took inspiration from a real woman from the 1920's burlesque scene, Gladys Bentley, for her style and shape. But Gladys didn't look like that.

(Photo posted by one of my favorite blogs for old 20's and beyond photos, New York: The Golden Age)

Gladys was a black lesbian, a crossdresser, and a crooner who took an unmistakably masculine role during a time when gender roles were in upheaval. You should absolutely look her up, because the shit they got up to back then was far more wild than some silly comics. She was also, you know, visibly fat. Her fat doesn't magically disappear under a tailcoat and double breasted vest, it just shapes it differently.

It would have taken so few changes to make her a rebellious, powerful character rather than a loose collection of sexualized traits. Less pinup doll, and more Gladys Bentley. They couldn't even give her a slight hint of a stomach, and people will lap it up because lol she's fat milf mommy ect ect. But like... is she though? Is she actually fat, or is she just twitter artist right kind of fat.

[enchanted-day-dreams]

I find it ironic that people love to talk about Billy Hargrove having internalized homophobia despite the fact that homophobic Billy is only a fanon trait, meanwhile Steve Harrington used queer as an insult against Jonathan Byers and yet folks wanna act like he's the most ally to ever ally (or even pretend he was never homophobic to begin with) just because he wasn't still a dick to Robin when she came out to him.

Y'all can have whatever headcanons you want, but the canon truth is that between Billy and Steve, only one of them got a homophobic insult slung at them but never slung it back, and it wasn't Steve.