When There's Something In Particular That You're Spiralling On (for Example A Recent Breakup, Something

You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

Think of the most bicyclist unfriendly urban section of road you can. Somewhere that even your most enthusiastic bicycling friends are careful on. Now imagine that road if you just removed every car. Keep the delivery vans, the trams, buses, motorcycles, scooters, crazy pedestrians and bicyclists, just remove the cars. No parked cars, no moving cars, no cars waiting at traffic lights. In such a circumstance, would that road still be "too dangerous" to cycle on?

We're so used to assuming that cars belong on streets, and that everything else is essentially borrowing space. But that's a category error.

A fly seeking out the most unusual thing in the area.

Unmute !

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

English class is excellent, but it needs to be more than just English class.

We need open ended research questions to teach folk how to formulate questions, interrogate data, state assumptions and test those assumptions. For example, using a data set of Senate votes, you can teach how voting works and how votes are counted (Civics), how two party preferred is calculated (Civics and Maths) and get students to write code (Tech) to process the data in various ways. Then use their findings (English) to support an argument (for example living a side on FPTP versus PV).

Science classes often cover pseudo science, but they should also cover how to analyse your test results, and what to do when your test results don't match the results you anticipated.

Religious education classes (where they exist) often cover cults, but everyone needs to be taught about how to identify cult-like indoctrination. It should be part of Health (or equivalent).

We need classes on relationships (not just sex ed), such as the importance of self respect, respecting the others, what healthy relationships look like (including friendships), what red flags to watch out for, what to do when you don't feel safe.

"they should teach media literacy in schools" english class "they should teach students how to spot misinformation" it's english class "they should teach kids critical thinking" it's called english class

The Zionist genocide and warmongering will likely be remembered as the death of the U.S.-centric, UN-mediated international political system that’s been predominant since the 90s. They’re using chemical weapons on UN officials and it doesn’t matter at all. They’re showing that they can do anything that they want and that the U.S. will give them infinite supplies anyways, there’s no longer any premise of legality at all. Definitely the first major sign for the fascistization of international politics to come

She was a sweet cat who didn't really like guests, but tolerated me.

Today I said goodbye to my beautiful cat. Eve was 18 years old and had thyroid disease, kidney disease and a heart murmur, all of this combined (even with attempting to treat the thyroid disease with medication) led to extreme nausea for her so she stopped eating. We tried everything, including different types of food and appetite increasing/nausea reducing medication, and nothing was successful.

For the first time since the late 1990s, we're without a furry friend in the house, which makes this loss even harder.

So let me tell you the story of how she ended up in our lives. We were having a new year's eve party, as you do, and some friends went outside to have a smoke. They came back inside with a kitten, "Is this yours?" they asked. "I guess it is for tonight," I replied, and took the kitten and put her in my bedroom. Our existing cats instantly hated the intruder. We put up signs around the neighbourhood and no one claimed her. So we had a new cat.

Over time the existing cats decided that she wasn't the absolute worst. The older of the two cats taught her how to hunt and catch mice and the mouse terror was born. Apparently mice were a lot of fun to play with, they made the best toys, had to be sung the song of her people, and we'd often just find scraps of mice about the house during a mouse plague. One night she caught 4, each of them smaller and smaller.

She had two litters of kittens before we managed to get her desexed.

After we moved house she spent a period being very scared of everything, but eventually settled down. Sky growls (thunder) and the vacuum cleaner were terrifying for ever, but sneezes and soft-drink bottles opening gradually were less of a threat.

She spent the last of her years lounging on my work laptop, in her comfortable cat bed, on my bed, or on me or my husband while we were in bed. She was never really a lap cat, but happy to curl up asleep on my thigh while I slept on my side or on my husband's bum while he read social media on his phone in bed.

Here she is guarding me from things coming in through the bedroom door.

And my very last photo of her.

May the rainbow road lead you to fields of mice you can play with my beautiful kitty.

I can imagine that the Mintari might come to regret that treaty.

Humans are weird: The Monster Inside

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)

I was an observer at the time sent by the Mintari command to coordinate the war effort alongside humanity against the Tempari Regime. A temperate people, the Tempari were roused into conflict with my people over the destruction of a religious comet that was projected to impact one of our colony worlds. Diplomatic talks were waylaid by feverous religious zealotry and so war was declared not long after.

Humanity interestingly enough had not been drawn into the conflict at first as they were not labeled as a belligerent by the Tempari. They would have remained out of the war entirely were it not for a defensive treaty they had signed some six of their months earlier. A notion they no doubt regretted but they still came and now found themselves facing down a Tempari fleet three times their number.

Admiral Horner was unusually calm about the entire situation; or at least that is how he presented himself. Humans are notoriously difficult to read when they wish to be and the Admiral was showing nothing beyond a calm calculating nature as his ships spread out.

I was wondering what rash move he would take to engage the Tempari. It was another well-known habitual that when humans came up against impossible odds they would always do the unexpected and somehow emerge victorious.

The Admiral opened a direct line of communication to the Tempari flagship. For the first time in recorded history a human admiral spoke directly to a Tempari fleet commander. Their name was Gilyan and they opened dialogue by asking the humans to abandon my people; that this war was not theirs to fight and if the humans departed now they would not be harmed.

It was a tempting offer and I must admit that I felt my hearts beat faster as Horner failed to rebuff the offer. I worried that they would indeed leave us to our fate and when the Admiral finally stood up and straighten their uniform I had all but stopped breathing.

“Did you say goodbye to your son?”

Whatever I had been expecting this certainly was not it, and the Tempari appeared just as caught off-guard as I.

“Excuse me?” Gilyan asked.

“Your son,” Admiral Horner continued as he took out a small wooden pipe and lit the end of it, “did you say goodbye to them before you deployed here?”

“I did not.” Gilyan replied cautiously.

“A pity.” Horner remarked as he took several puffs from his pipe and then looked at the Tempari commander. I watched as quietly a series of targeting vectors began appearing over on ship amongst the Tempari lines. It wasn’t the flagship and as far as I could see it was just another Tempari light cruiser, but every gun in the human fleet was now locked on to it as the Admiral gave his final words before the storm.

“No parent should outlive their child.”

The communication went dead as the entire fleet opened fire as one on the light cruiser. Shields of bright purple flared for a moment, straining to hold off the torrent of firepower before bursting like a popped bubble.

Countless warheads, rail gun rounds, plasma lances, and all other manner of ordinance peppered the hull of the cruiser causing it to buckle and break like a twig in a raging stream before finally the inevitable happened.

What had been a light cruiser just moments before was now a cluster of debris slowly floating amongst the Tempari fleet.

Before I had any time to ponder what had just happened the Admiral began issuing fleet wide orders for a withdrawal. Under a storm of Tempari return fire the allied fleet began turning around and engaging their jump drives to flee out of system. At the head of the fleet was the Tempari flagship recklessly charging ahead of their fleet leaving it dangerously exposed; yet the Admiral refused to turn and engage them. Their cannons claimed three human ships before our own flagship made the jump and left the system. 

“You know they can track our trajectory.” I offhandedly remarked to the Admiral as he reclined into his command throne.

“I am aware.” The Admiral replied dryly. “They will follow us; of that I am sure.”

“And why are you so sure?” I asked.

The human looked at me and with a grin that could make their devil pale they said, “Because we just killed their commander’s son.”

--------------------------- What followed was what came to be known as the “Bloody Quadrant”.

The human fleet led the Tempari fleet on a wild chase throughout the entire Quadrant. Always near but just out of reach of their grasp. A place the humans had carefully crafted them to be in.

Every time the Tempari fleet would exit a jump they would find themselves in a deadly trap.

In the Gameri system the Tempari fleet exited a jump directly into a massive nuclear minefield that took out thirteen of their capital ships.

In the Hulv Nebula they were ambushed by small squadrons of frigates that picked off their supply and repair ships before retreating.

Worse yet was when the human fleet actually appeared to turn and fight above the moon of Y’op only to detonated previously hidden explosives within the orbital body and shatter the moon. They jumped out of system just as the debris field of the former moon showered the Tempari fleet decimating a third of their remaining forces.

I could not help but ponder why the Tempari were so intent for battle even after suffering such terrible losses, but at the same time I had known the answer.

By killing the Tempari commander’s son in the opening battle the humans had driven them into a blind rage. Their thirst for revenge would not allow them the luxury of letting the humans escape, and by remaining so close to them they ensured the blood lust would continue to build and cloud their judgment.

At the end only the Tempari flagship and fifteen escort vessels remained when Admiral Horner had decided the chase had reached its end. They were battered and scoured with the battle damage from a dozen battles and now they faced off against the entire allied navy.

“Will you offer them terms of surrender?” I asked as the Tempari formed up for the final time. The human shook his head.

“I will not insult them anymore than I already have.” He spoke in a stoic voice. “We will let them die well.”

To my surprise I could detect hints of remorse in their voice as the Tempari charged at our ship.

One by one the escorts were picked off until only their flagship remained making a suicidal charge at our ship. I watched as it shrugged off round after round of concentrated rail gun fire as it pressed forward and it looked that it would collide with us and carry out its final revenge.

A thermal warhead struck its rear thrusters at the last moment. The two ships scraped and grinded against each other’s hulls and the entire ship shook with a force I would equate to an earthquake. Countless human crewmen were thrown from their seats and some of the less lucky ones were dashed against the metal terminals of their posts and fell limply to the ground, blood pooling around them from their wounds. The Admiral watched unmoving from his throne as his ship sparked and screamed in pain until finally the nightmare ended.

The Tempari ship drifted behind our ship, now dotting countless holes and trails of smoke from plasma fires raging across multiple decks. Admiral Horner didn’t even bother to watch as his rival finally met their end, and instead relinquished the bridge to his second so he could go to his quarters to rest.

“They’ll call you a monster for this.” I couldn’t help myself from saying as the enemy flagship finally detonated.

With a look of disappointment in their eye the Admiral turned to me. “I should hope so; war makes monsters of us all.”

Somethin' I'm Good At - Alec Hardison

Watch it on Youtube

Oh my gosh it's finally done!! I've been obsessing over this video for a few days now and ahhh I'm so excited that it's finished and I can share it with people!!

And of course I know Hardison is insanely competent at anything and everything, but this song just fit his personality so perfectly, I had to make the video! No insult towards him, just a fun and silly video that I can't stop dancing along with. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I'm in tech and I agree that there are some things that LLMs can do better (and certainly faster) than I can.

1. Provide workable solutions to well-described (but fairly straightforward) problems. For example "using jq (a json query language tool) take two json files and combine them in this manner...."

2. Identify and fix format issues: "what changes are required to make this string valid json?"

3. Doing boring chores. "Using this sample data, suggest a well normalised database structure. Write a script that creates a Postgres database, and creates the tables decided above. Write a second script that accepts json objects that look like EXAMPLE and adds them into the database."

However, while there is a risk my employer will decide that LLMs can reduce the workforce significantly, 99% of what I do can't be done by LLMs yet and I can't see how that would change.

LLMs have the ability to draw on the expertise and documentation created by millions of people. They can synthesise that knowledge to provide answers to fairly casually askef questions. But they have no *understanding* of the content they're synthesising, which is why they can't give correct answers to questions like "what is 2+2?" or "how many times does the letter r appear in strawberry?" Those questions require *understanding* of the premise of the question. "Infer, based on hundreds of millions of pages of documentation and examples, how to use this tool to do that thing" is a much easier ask.

The other thing about having no understanding is that they can't create anything truly new. They can create new art in the style of the grand masters, compose music, write stories... But only in a derivative sense. LLMs possess no mind, so they can't *imagine* anything. Users who use LLMs to realise their own art are missing out on the value of learning how to create their art themselves. Just as I am missing out on the value of learning how to use the tool jq to manipulate json files which would enable me to answer my own question.

LLMs have such a large environmental footprint, that they're morally dubious at best. It should be alarming that LLM proponents are telling us to just use these tools without worrying about the environment, because we aren't doing enough to fix climate change anyway. "Leave solving the future to LLMs?!" LLMs aren't going to solve climate change, they're incapable of *understanding* and *innovating*. We already know how to save ourselves from climate change, but the wealthy and powerful don't want to because it would require them to be less rich and powerful.

The trillion dollar problem is literally "how do we change our current society such that leadership requires the ability to lead, a commitment to listen to experts and does not result in the leader getting buckets of money from bribes and lobbying?" preferably without destroying the supply chain and killing hundreds of thousands.

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.