where-his-towel-is

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@your-turn-to-role you can't just leave this in the tags sorry its too good

Percy's Walk of Shame

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so like I said, I work in the tech industry, and it's been kind of fascinating watching whole new taboos develop at work around this genAI stuff. All we do is talk about genAI, everything is genAI now, "we have to win the AI race," blah blah blah, but nobody asks - you can't ask -

What's it for?

What's it for?

Why would anyone want this?

I sit in so many meetings and listen to genuinely very intelligent people talk until steam is rising off their skulls about genAI, and wonder how fast I'd get fired if I asked: do real people actually want this product, or are the only people excited about this technology the shareholders who want to see lines go up?

like you realize this is a bubble, right, guys? because nobody actually needs this? because it's not actually very good? normal people are excited by the novelty of it, and finance bro capitalists are wetting their shorts about it because they want to get rich quick off of the Next Big Thing In Tech, but the novelty will wear off and the bros will move on to something else and we'll just be left with billions and billions of dollars invested in technology that nobody wants.

and I don't say it, because I need my job. And I wonder how many other people sitting at the same table, in the same meeting, are also not saying it, because they need their jobs.

idk man it's just become a really weird environment.

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One day, Aragorn shows up with blue hair. Not fully blue, just a few streaks.

Naturally, Legolas immediately decides that he has to dye his hair because no one can have more fabulous hair than him. He dyes it green. It looks pretty good.

This fad goes through the Fellowship, Gimli bleaching his hair and doing purple streaks, Frodo goes with some tasteful blue tips, Sam matches Legolas with some green streaks (“Us plant lovers have to stick together, Mr. Elf.”), Merry and Pippin squabble over it but eventually Merry gets red highlights and Pippin gets orange streaks. Boromir gets blue to match Aragorn.

The real shock comes a week later when Gandalf shows up with ombré pink ends.

Pippin immediately insists on changing his hair to match.

Eventually, the entire Fellowship has some amount of pink hair. Legolas went all out and dyed all his hair pink.

Thranduil was furious.

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Anyway, y'all wanna know about some more fucked up parallels between the US and latinoamérica? A *30 minute long* storm last Friday left more people without electricity in São Paulo than fucking Hurricane Milton did in Florida.

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Brennan Lee Mulligan, Matthew Mercer, Aabria Iyengar

the weavers of tales of Exandria

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i know we make a lot of jokes on this site about enrichment and stuff but like. i was just talking to one of my clients today about the importance of novelty to the human brain. if you've been feeling bored, detached, just kind of gross, floating from day to day, get some enrichment in that brain!!

doing Something Weird And Unusual can drastically improve the mood of a bored brain. but i also recognize that its hard to think of stuff when youre in that zone, so i came up with a list to help out! it has a balance of sensory, physical, intellectual, outdoor, indoor, cheap, and free stuff

some tips:

choose a consistent time/amount to use the list (suggestion: once a week, which isn't too time consuming but is enough to see benefits when used short- and long-term)

if youre struggling with decision making or commitment, roll a d20 to decide what to do. reroll if it's something you do often anyway, if weather does not permit, if you dont have money/supplies, etc

if you do a lot of intellectual/escapist activities, maybe focus on grounded, physical, and outdoor stuff. opposite applies too, if you're a physical/active person, focus on intellectual, artistic, and indoor stuff

not everything is accessible to everyone, so feel free to make your own list with stuff you can do! i require no credit for anything on here, reuse or edit how you please. if you repost with your own, linking back to the original is nice but not required

the enrichment list:

take 5 photos of things you've never seen/noticed before

try a new food (bonus for spicy/crunchy/sensory)

make a sculpture with play doh or clay

collect leaves to press into a book

make a paper cut out scene

read a chapter of a book backwards by page

make a mud pie

listen to 5 songs in a new music genre & write your thoughts on them

fingerpaint

make a pillow fort

create a 1 page TTRPG

read a play out loud (by yourself or with friends)

paint your nails if you don't usually (try designs if you do)

prepare an interesting meal/dessert

take a walk somewhere new (or take a new route home)

do a body scan meditation

do elaborate, fun makeup (designs! glitter! tiger stripes!)

draw a self portrait (/in a new medium)

read 5 randomly generated wikipedia articles

dance for 10 minutes/dramatically perform a song

have fun enriching those brains!!

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astarion is cheating

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How deep does the hole go?

Art by Penzilla

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they have discovered algorithm (durge hasn't posted a while, bhaal temple really needs the revenue) (feel free to leave me ideas for other characters!!)

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Guys I’m going to make a hot take

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OKAY TUMBLR

What's going on

Why is nobody talking about HOW FUCKING GOOD KAOS IS yet

Am I going to have to do this all myself?

Why are we not talking about the incredible effortless trans and disability rep & how the director is non-binary & just changed Atropos' pronouns in the script the same day that Sam Buttery switched from they/them to she/her? Or how they actually use the canonically trans man mythological figure of Caenis & show his top surgery scars in his second scene so we know immediately who he is and why [SPOILER EVENT] happened? Why aren't we talking about the flawless worldbuilding? Is no one going to draw me endless Furies fan art? Are we gonna talk about how Harold Perrineau's daughter is starring in a show whose visual language pulls so directly from Romeo + Juliet? Am I going to have to start this fucking hype train myself?

(Also my wife falls asleep very quickly and I've only watched through the end of ep 3 so far so don't spoil me on how they reinterpret the extant myths ok thx)

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reason's to watch kaos:

queers everywhere

the furies are butches that ride motorcycles

the fates are genderqueering it up in a sexy little dive bar in the desert

eurydice and orpheus tale but eurydice is sick of orpheus and about to break up with him before she's sent to the underworld. except she can't pass over because orpheus also took her gold coin to keep her in place so he can rescue her. cue eurydice growing more bitter about him.

disabled daedalus

trans amazonian stories

dionysus is there getting rawed by cute boys in bars

prometheus and charon are boy toys together

billie piper as cassandra

zeus and poseidon torture human beings for fun. it's a pass time of theirs.

hades is a sleepy old man who can barely keep his head up and pesephone is a hot babe secretly in charge of the underworld. she's hades backbone.

zeus has a house full of pretty boys in tiny shorts that he kills for sport and they never complain :)

poseidon's huge bulge on display at all times

hera is as much a prisoner to zeus as zeus is a prisoner to her and they keep esch other like prison wardens

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Absolutely screaming at this tweet exchange

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If you know anyone who writes music, today has probably been a very crappy day for them.

Finale, one of the most dominant programs for music notation for the past 35 years, is coming to an end. They’re no longer updating it or allowing people to purchase it, and it won’t be possible to authorize on new devices or if you upgrade your OS.

I’ve personally been using Finale to write music for about 20 years (since middle school!). It’s not something that I depend on for money, and my work should be compatible with other programs, so I’ll be fine, but this is very, very bad news for lots of people who depend on this software for their livelihood.

The shittiest thing is that this was preventable. From a comment on Finale’s post:

As a former Tech Lead on Finale (2019-2021) I can tell you this future was avoidable. Those millions of lines of code were old and crufty, and myself and others recognized something had to be done. So we created a plan to modernize the code base, focusing on making it easier to deliver the next few rounds of features. I encouraged product leadership to put together a feature roadmap so our team could identify where the modernization effort should be focused.

We had a high level architecture roadmap, and a low level strategy to modernize basic technologies to facilitate more precise unit testing. The plan was to create smart interfaces in the code to allow swapping out old UI architecture for a more modern, reliable, and better maintained toolset that would grow with us rather than against us.

But in the end it became clear support wasn’t coming from upper management for this effort.

I’m sad to see Finale end this way.

Finale also could allow people who own the software to move it to their new devices in the future, but Capitalism. It’s a pointless corporate IP decision that only hurts users.

There are three main options for those of us who are having to switch: Dorico, MuseScore, or Sibelius.

Sibelius has been Finale’s main competitor for as long as I can remember. It currently runs on a subscription model (ew). The programs are about equal in terms of their capabilities, though I’ve heard Finale has more options for experimental notation. (I’ve used both; Finale worked better for my workflow, but that’s probably just because I grew up using it.)

Dorico is the hip new kid and I’d personally been considering switching for quite a while, but it’s ungodly expensive (about twice what Finale cost at full price). Thankfully, they are allowing current Finale users to purchase at a price comparable (well, still 50% higher) to what Finale used to cost with the educator discount. It apparently has a very steep learning curve at first, though it is probably the best option for experimental notation.

MuseScore is open source, which is awesome! But it also has the most limitations for people who write using experimental notation.

I haven’t used MuseScore or Dorico and will probably end up switching to one of those, but it’s also not an urgent matter for me. Keep your musician friends in your thoughts; it’s going to be a rough road ahead if they used Finale.

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the worst thing about house of leaves is how Stupid I look reading it in public lmao. yes I know I’m holding the book upside down and turning it in circles