It’s delicious! I promise!
It’s delicious! I promise!
I think it’s good to incorporate a healthy amount of Yearning when it comes to the seasonality of foods. like the novelty of a peach or a pint of blueberries disappears when you can have them in the dead of winter, and with it the novelty of the seasons just as a whole. you also become less aware of what is in season around you and how many different ways you can experiment with what’s available. I do not enjoy living in a vacuum of convenience when it means there’s nothing to look forward to anymore!
I think it'd be fun to make a silly little au where Jon can shapeshift into a cat but keeps it a secret specifically bc I can imagine the scene where he breaks down and admits he believes in the supernatural to Martin bc he's like. Of course I believe in the supernatural I AM supernatural and Martin's like wh- and after the reveal there's a mortifying moment where Martin realizes he's been trying to give little treats to his boss for several months
I am legitimately so upset, I don’t have very much longer at my current job and I only just realized that I have the perfect opportunity to casually but forcibly educate the public that earthworms are an invasive species in most of the northern half of North America. NOBODY realizes that earthworms are invasive because most of us grew up learning about how good earthworms are for the soil and finding them in the ground and there’s generally a lot of positive cultural messaging about earthworms*. While most people are generally aware of invasive species and try not to spread them, they don’t think of earthworms in that category. It can be really surprising to learn that earthworms can be bad for the environment - I know it was for me. So I’ll take advantage of my audience here:
Please be aware of this if you live in the region and use earthworms for fishing or gardening. Further resources can be found at the Citizen Science Project Great Lakes Worm Watch and the UMN Invasive Species page.
*Positive cultural messaging about earthworms is great - for the regions that they’re native to, such as Europe. Not so much in regions where they’re invasive.
Yeah I love them but they don’t belong :( …..everything you hear about them being beneficial is because they’re beneficial for the also non-native gardens and crops people grow.
Note that this does not mean you can help by killing earthworms; not even a nuclear apocalypse would undo their presence at this point.
For those wondering what was meant to fill their niche; basically nothing actually. Old growth forests didn’t evolve for “soil” churned up and aerated by anything, but grow entirely on thousands of layers of old rotten wood and moss slowly fermented by bacteria that aren’t meant to be exposed to air.
idk who needs to hear this rn but suffering is not noble. take the tylenol
One time when I was younger I was refusing to take headache medicine and my mom said “the person who invented that medicine is probably so sad you won’t let them help you” and now every time I find myself denying medicine I just imagine the saddest scientist making those big wet eyes like “why won’t you let me help” and whoop then I take the medicine
cannot get over how ART had one of the most iconic character introductions of all time. in the span of 100 pages and a few weeks, it was like hey. if you mess with me i'll squash you like a bug. check out how i'm 10,000 times more powerful than you. wanna watch tv together? ah FUCK my tv blorbo died. what do you mean you won't tell me all the secrets of your dark past. can i do some surgery on you? do you need me to blow anything up? let me hijack your brain for a couple seconds. ok that went great! here's my number in case you ever need it
as a bi person, the bisexual flag brings me infinite joy and always puts a smile on my face, however as a person who has a Passion for Graphic Design, that undersaturated shade of purple infuriates me when it's used digitally
like, on an actual flag - which was its original purpose - it looks great!
those look fine! lovely, even! with the semi-transparent fabric, the way it catches the sunlight, it looks beautiful!
but now look at how it looks digitally
the pink and blue are so vibrant compared to the sad, lonely lavender!
and let's look at this statement from Michael Page, the creator of the bi flag:
(sidenote: he created this flag in 1998, so if his takes on bisexuality is different from yours, it's okay to notice that! a lot has changed since the 90s when it comes to lived experiences and the way we describe them. but, it's also important to respect his thoughts about this and the way he presented them, even if today, we'd probably not say that bi people "blend unnoticeably into both the gay/lesbian and straight communities.")
so in pantone colors, the pink is 226 C, the blue is 286 C, and the purple of the flag is 258 C.
but...here's the deal
Michael talks here about how the key to understanding the symbolism is to know that the purple blends into both the pink and blue. and on a physical flag, I think you can see that!
but digitally, it absolutely does not blend. it clashes badly, and looks oddly separate from the other two colors.
which got me wondering...what purple do you get if you actually blend 226 C and 286 C?
oh! oh, my god.
look at that! look at how nicely it fits between those colors!
look at it next to the original color scheme! look at how much more vibrant the purple is!
and friends. this is just blending through rgb! you get even more purple variations when you use other color spaces!
let's compare all of them:
(top: original, lab. middle: lrgb, lch. bottom: rgb, hsl)
look at all of the different purple options you can get just by combining these two colors!
if you want almost too-vibrant saturation, you can go hsl, if you want something more relaxed that's closer to the original, you can go lab or lrgb. and if you want to split the difference, lch is bright and violet, while rgb is there with its saturated but darker purple.
anyway, I guess I don't really have a point here? this isn't so much an informational post as it is Me Getting Weird About Colors, but I think it is a useful lesson about how colors look very different on screens compared to how they look on objects in real life.
and sometimes, I think it's okay to compensate for that.
out of all of these, this is my favorite bi flag:
it's the one where the colors were blended in lab color space. for me, the lighter, softer purple is close enough to the original bi flag purple, while also feeling like a smoother blend of the blue and pink
but that's just me! and it might not even look the same to you, since every screen is different, because technology is a nightmare!
anyway, thank you for coming with me on this colorful journey! I will now retreat back to inkscape and make pained sounds about inkstitch gradients until something tangible pulls me back into reality
what movie do y’all know front to back like it doesn’t even have to necessarily be Good,, it’s just something you’ve seen so many times that the dialogue is printed into the very core of your being
current note count: 295
"The biggest issue is students using it, me spotting it and having no recourse whatsoever to do anything about it." can you elaborate a bit further
Hello !
So to explain a bit more: we [aka your lecturers, teachers, teaching assistants, etc…] know that some students will use ChatGPT.
And there is a discussion to be had about how to work with this, how to design assessment which allow students to leverage something which may simply become a fixture of writing in a workplace environment, but that is not the discussion we are having here. Because that is not what we are worried about.
The defensible, problematic situation is: a student straight up entering the essay prompt on ChatGPT, and using the grand skills of Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V, submits it as their own paper.
And our main worry, I think, was for a long time that we would not be able to catch it. That students would, actually, be able to fool us and that we would actually think this was a student who understood the course, who put in the work, and who deserve to be rewarded for their grade. That was the main fear.
But here is the thing.
And listen up, students :
Essays written by ChatGPT :
I cannot stress enough how easy they are to spot. You are NOT fooling anyone. I do not need the platform’s AI-detecting tool to know when an essay was written by Chat GPT. It is so, very painfully obvious when that’s the case.
But the problem then becomes : ok, I have spotted a student who cheated.
It is one thing to KNOW that an essay was AI-generated, it is another to defend it to a plagiarism committee. First of all, does it actually count as plagiarism ? Second, how do prove, with certainty, that the student did not write it ? How to I convince the plagiarism committee that this is worth looking into ? I am in the role of a police officer, who needs to convince the DA that this is a winnable case, that prosecuting will not be a waste of their time. But I don’t have a Similarity Percentage to rely on. I don’t have an original source to say “look, this is the exact same wording!” like in a classic plagiarism case.
Best case scenario, I can make my case for thee student to actually be called to the plagiarism committee, where we probe into how, exactly, they wrote their essay, until they fold. Unlikely, morally questionable, and in all likelihood, ineffective on students already so confident in their bullshit that they have the audacity to submit a fully AI-generated work for their finals.
But let me tell you something. First, that essay is getting the shittiest grade we can give you. Because you know what is more difficult than a lecturer proving that a student used AI to generate their essay ? A student proving that they deserve a better grade. Once we give you a grade, burden of evidence is on you to prove that you have not been graded properly. And we can come up with 15 reasons why an essay is a shit essay. We put on kids’ gloves, when we lecture and give feedback. We give the simplified version of most theories, we give the basics of how to structure an essay, the bar we set is spectacularly low, because students come in good faith, they are learning, they will not be held at the same standard as academics. But if you try to argue that you need a higher grade, when you had the audacity to not write a single word of your work, the kids gloves are going to come off real quick, and your lecturer will be able to very convincingly explain why, actually, giving you a passing grade was a mercy in the first place.
Second. Academics, especially angry academics, are a gossip machine.
You may get a passing grade, and there may be no official note of it in your file whatsoever. But I can guarantee you that your lecturer will chat with their colleagues. That every single one of your essay that year, and the years to come, will be looked at with so much scrutiny I hope your referencing for every single work reaches perfection. Every single paragraph will be looked at with the knowledge that you are likely to have had it AI-generated. Lecturers will tell their TA to look at for That One Student when they grade you .You will not be getting any flexibility from us, no extension without full documentation to support it, no letter of recommendation from any member of the faculty, no word in your favor if you are bordering a grade bracket. If we are feeling especially petty, we might even forget to answer your emails or answer any question you have with such warmth and kindness you really still never feel like asking a question again in our class. And I know that, because that’s already happening. I have the name of three undergrads that we know, for a fact, did not write their own essay. Two are not even in my modules at all.
Now. That’s pretty mean. But if you have the absolute audacity and lack of ethics required to submit an essay for which you have not written a single word, and thought it would actually work, when your lecturer spent probably more that 80 hours working in this module this term, gave you the opportunity to meet for office hours, to ask any question in person or in email, to have extensions, accommodations, additional time ? When you decided that putting exactly zero second of your time, considered that you were above that - and above other students- and yet we were not able to officially sanction you for it, we had to give you a passing grade, the same passing grade as students who actually made an effort?
Yeah, sorry, you are not getting any sympathy from your lecturers anymore.
i was thinking about the weirdest phone calls i got when i still worked at the public library and i remembered this one phone call. it was probably less than 20 seconds long, but it still makes me laugh.
anyways, this woman called and without even saying hello after i said the usual “public library, how can i help you?” spiel, she said, “i have a very important question: when you shelve books, do you push them all to the front of the shelf or all the way back?”
it took me a second to process the question and then i answered that, at the library, we always shelve them so that they are even with the front edge so they’re easier to grab and see. she was obviously delighted by this answer and then, as if an afterthought, she asked, “okay, what about you? what do you do at home with your books?” i said i did the same thing. she hummed in obvious agreement and then just like that she said “thank you!” and hung up.
i never heard from her again. i hope she won whatever argument she was having.
for about a year, i worked at a call center for sprint. i have a similar kind of story.
a woman called, and said she had a question about the call history on her bill. “sure, let me just pull up your account-” and she cut me off going, “no, no, it’s not anything specific, it’s just. so, if you change the time on your phone, does that change the time on the bill?”
“uh… no? the time on the phone doesn’t matter, the call history is recorded by the towers.”
“ohhhh” she said in the saltiest voice i have ever heard “so even if you changed the timezone it wouldn’t change the time on the bill? to, say, the middle of the night?”
i stg yall i looked into the camera like i was on the office. “um… no? it would still be the local time of the tower. is there anything else i can help you with?”
to me, overly chipper: “nope! thank you! have a great day!” turning on someone as she hung up: “she says yoU’RE A LYING SACK OF-”
i still mean-snicker every time i think about it.
i used to work in a call center for a roadside assistance company, from late 2015 to early 2016. it was easily the most miserable job i’ve ever had, and the turnover rate was very high. people stuck on the side of the road tend to be quick to anger - understandably so - and it wears on you after awhile.
so i had been having a string of very time-consuming, draining calls. my line rings again, i steel myself for another angry caller, and i pick up. “[redacted] roadside assistance, how can i help you?” i chirp, in my Customer Service Voice.
“yeah, hi,” a gentleman with a thick southern accent responds. “my motorcycle won’t start.”
i brace immediately for another long call. motorcycles were notoriously difficult to work with - a lot of insurance companies wouldn’t insure them, and a lot of tow companies refused to pick them up because they require a specific sort of trailer.
“i’m sorry to hear that, sir. what’s your current location?”
“oh, i’m just at my house. i was wondering if it would be okay for me to just load it into my trailer and take it to my buddy’s shop. would that interfere with my insurance?”
i click through his account and am Relieved to discover he’s in the clear. “No sir, it looks like you’re good to go. Can I help you with anything else?”
A pause. “Have you heard the good news?”
My Anxiety, which had been receding, suddenly spikes into the fucking stratosphere. I live in the rural south. The “good news” usually means “Jesus” and i was in no mood to be proselytized to for god knows how long.
i steel myself for the Religious Talk. “What news, sir?”
“McDonald’s is now serving breakfast all day!”
I laughed so hard I almost cried. I hope that guy ate as many hashbrowns as he could.