Wait I Saw A Leaf

Most discussions about “misinformation” treat the problem as if people simply don’t have good enough critical-thinking skills. It sounds intuitive, but it’s not entirely accurate. The problem isn’t just individual ignorance, it’s the structure of the information environment people are placed into.

In the era of slavery, free black people had to carry their "free papers" with them so they could prove to the authorities that they were free, or else they would be thrown in jail and sold.

Cutie pie 🥰

A poster on 8.5 x 11 inch paper saga Fishtown fish facts: red lipped catfish or of ocephalus Darwini. Then a pic of that freaky fish with 4 limbs it rests on the ground and then the words “stg this fish real red-lipped batfish walk ocean floor with they flippers RLBF have RBF, not they fault RLBF have a bioluminescent lure that glows to attract dinner RLBF lipgloss is popping, RLBF lipgloss is cool, all the fish keep jockin, they chase RLBF after school RLBF got scales like armor and shine bright like a diamond Red-lipped batfish will teach you how to dougie, I can promise u that. @yaboyni Take a moment And and realize the moment You took has already passed Thank you See you next time

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

Just bought one myself, waiting to see if the fussy process of getting the seeds out wakes up my hyperfocus side (which loves that) or the lazy side (which won’t let me touch it).

It’s disheartening when research is interrupted. So often the work just can’t be picked up again when (if?) funding returns and projects has to restart entirely from scratch. People lose heart when their work is ruined over incompetence and petty politics.

It’s one thing to believe in the abstract that authoritarian, fascist, or personalist regimes displace expertise for loyalty, it’s entirely a different thing to watch it happen all over the place in your country.

screenshot of a tumblr post from user “wildmansters” The thing that really boils my potatoes about Al in general is that I have been a creative professional for over a decade now and the devil has ALWAYS been in the details. Big and small, I've had single-person businesses rip me to shreds over how their colors turned out on newsprint, and have worked with huge companies with THICK brand guidelines with every detail of their brand identity laid out and enforced with an iron fist. But I guess all of that stuff doesn't matter anymore? Who gives a fuck if this Al generated baby has six fingers, that mom-and-pop shop is still going to use it. That rug from Temu says Happy Thanksgivirg? Oh well haha it's just a silly funny thing now (nevermind that you never would have given a B-grade item from a craft show the same consideration). I don't actually care that the Al Coca-cola ad has a truck that changes size every scene, but I can't help but think about how, if it had been some poor underpaid artist, they would have been laughed out of the building. I don't really know how to put it in a succint way but it just feels all the more obvious how much more grace and flexibility has always been possible but never offered.

i know WHY this is but that just makes it even more of a kick in the pants lmao

Kid stepping on his own head with a rubber boot meme. The boot has "Collapsing economy... due to racism" written on it.

Racism is expensive. This whole messy chapter is costing us lives and trillions of $

Trillions. With a T.

Good news:
We could stop this financial ruin at any time! It's entirely self inflicted

Bad news:
But we won't. Because we like the racism. We prefer it to not going bankrupt / into recession

Making it impossible for an author to sell their next book doesn’t just kill that book. It makes it far less likely the author will continue writing at all. They have to make a living somehow and they were already earning pennies an hour for their bonkers fragile and emotionally demanding work.

Donna is in my top three after Sarah Jane and tied with Bill

Whoa it's almost like this entire cultural movement is based on fake bullshit at every level and our leaders should stop letting fucking social media dictate policy

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

The ones who figure it out will always be the ones who appreciate it most

Friendly reminder that dishwashers made after 1995 or so are so water and energy efficient that even if you ran them twice fully loaded it would still use less water than handwashing the same load.

So many "green" things feel like sacrifices. Dishwashers are not one of them.

And we knew this. This wasn't speculation. We studied it, we had the talking points. We trained volunteers to explain this to people. It's not a surprise. Rich people don't flee places with good quality of life when we increase the quality of life. They might try to cheat us, but they don't leave.

This getting coverage in New York Magazine’s section on buying things is a great sign that #WeAintBuyingIt!

On the one hand this is great news & we absolutely should expand these programs

The problem is that “conservatives” think it’s *good* when the people they define as abnormal suffer, so their aim of denying coverage for lifesaving programs is a win-win for evil

We have to fight that too

you can live in a bog!

a cute male house finch on my porch, looking down at his feet. It has a red breast and face, with brown stripes on his body.

look at mah feets, I’m a T-Rex rawwwr

This new policy from NIH is concerning.

It looks like a way to weaponize administrative burden, one of Russell Vought's favorite moves to break gov't.

Background: Program staff / NIH institute directors can move grants around outside peer review order. 1/

Foreground a heart shaped leaf primarily red with mottled orange and brown flecks, bisected by a long tear with jagged edges. Background other brown leaves and pinestraw.

Screenshot from Windows Settings>Privacy and Security>Text and image Generation. "Text and image generation uses on-device AI technologies to quickly respond to requests. Turning this settings off will not affect apps and features using cloud AI technologies. Text and image generation Windows and anyone using this device can use Text and image generation.

BY THE WAY

If you've updated to Windows 11 recently, you're probably on version 25H2.

There's a new setting in Settings: Privacy & Security.

Scroll aaaaaaaalll the way to the bottom and you'll see "Text and Image Generation."

TURN IT OFF.

I think this is true but it’s also even worse than this: by doing this I think what elites have inadvertently selected for is malicious low cunning and the willingness to use it as a weapon.

Years ago, I shared a picture of this really beautiful scene in Kentucky, of all places. This woman swooped in with,”yeah but Mitch McConnell.” I honestly just started blocking liberally at that point.

"He has fallen victim to a fishing call." -an otter holding a fishy against his ear, like a phone

An exchange on twitter. controlla.xyz: If you hate Al you probably just hate art and expression It's an infinite mashup of all the best art ever made by humans lesliejandersonwriter: If you hate the juice at the bottom of a restaurant dumpster you just hate food and cooking. It's an infinite mashup of all the best food made by humans!

I love this.