It's sad that I can't look at a beautiful photo of a UK river without wondering how much sewage has been discharged there.
In 2023, the sewer right near where this photo was taken spilled for a total of 299.25 hours, which is quite low compared to many other locations.
I worry about the long term state of UK rivers.
If anyone from the UK reads this, https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map has info on how people can help
Some android phones have the ability to long press on a notification, click on settings, and alter what kinds of notifications you receive. I've had a few instances like you describe, but where I've been able to turn off "special deals" or whatever. I think implementation of this is done by the app developer though, because I'm sure I've had some apps that had no useful settings. Example screenshot of Gmail settings:
Now you're older, how frequently do you think you were right in your comparisons?
You've got to be careful with rolling your eyes, because the parallelism of the two eyes means that the eye roll can be twice as powerful ^1
(1) If measured against the silly baseline of a single eyeroll
A few posts above this one, I saw a post about how German bridges are falling apart, so your comment has done me psychic damage. Man, things feel grim.
There's actually a pretty large ea-nasir meme-posting culture, it's one of my favourite internet things.
Basically it originated from this cuneiform tablet from 1750BC, the oldest known written complaint.
Translation of the complaint: (source: 1967 Book "Letters from Mesopotamia"
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows : "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!"
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.
How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
Most of the humour of the various memes and jokes (some examples found here) seems to stem from the fact that Nanni's salt and rage has endured thousands of years and now we know about it. Ea-Nasir will always be remembered as a shitty copper merchant, and there's just something inherently hilarious about that, to me.
I'm an autistic woman, and I've found great success in leaning into my autistic tendencies. By that, I mean just being blunt and upfront. One of my favourites is that if I've got chemistry with someone I don't expect to see again, before I bid them farewell, I'll give them a note with my number on and say something like "I had a great time hanging out with you tonight, would you like to go on a date with me sometime?" And then I hand them my number and scuttle off like a crab because I can only put on a cool face for so long before I crack under the anxiety.
Any trans women who relate to this meme, this comment is addressed to you. I'm not going to tell you not to snack on the self-harm salad, because I know it's not that easy; I was first cat-called at age 13, and despite being terrified and deeply uncomfortable, I remember feeling happy because it felt like validation — because even at that young age, I had internalised the idea that being appealing to men was what it mean to succeed as a woman.
We live in a patriarchal society, and that means that every woman is faced with this bitter meal at some point, as well as the decision on how to work past the stage where we tell ourselves we like it because it gives us some modicum of agency. It can feel pointless to be a feminist sometimes when misogyny is so insidious.
But trust me when I tell you that happiness won't be found in this soggy pile of limp leaves and lies. You're so much more than the misogynists would have you believe. You've already fought so hard to live as a woman, and I think it'd be a damn shame at this point if we didn't get to see what kind of woman you want to be. I had help to realise that being a woman doesn't mean conforming to patriarchal standards, so when you're feeling secure enough that you want to move beyond relying on misogyny validation, I, and many others me, are here to support you.
And not just because trans rights are human rights, but because you are wanted and needed here. My wish to see you at your best is a slightly selfish one, because my own gender experience and understanding of womanhood has been immeasurably improved by having trans women in my life and in my community. I can't wait to see what we can build together, because you can offer something that I, or other cis women simply can't do on our own. You add something unique and beautiful and truly special to this world, and to the conversation of what a woman can be.
In the meantime, don't beat yourself up for clawing some small comfort from harmful sources. It's a difficult time, so be kind to yourself in whatever way you can. Besides, I may speak like I'm enlightened, but I still struggle with this shit too; Recognizing and resisting harmfuk toxicity isn't the kind of fight you can ever really win, you always have to keep an eye out for it. It's easier with good friends though, and a community that supports you. If you don't have much of those things yet, I wish you good luck in finding a place that you're comfortable, and the strength to remember that you are wanted, you are loved, and you are valuable, as you are - the real you, even if you're still discovering her, or the world hasn't seen her yet.
“He’s the object of derision. It’s his nightmare. He can’t control the script. He can’t control the cinematography. He can’t control what’s being said about him. And the outcome could go in a direction he really doesn’t want,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and critic.
I felt a weird sense of almost pity reading this. On the surface, when I think about how deeply uncomfortable this scenario was for Trump, I'm glad, because he's laughable and this is nothing compared to the harms he has wrought on the world. But at a level deeper than that, when I think about how, for a narcissist like Trump, this is probably the greatest torture one could devise, and that's so pathetic that it's just sad.
To people like Trump, everything is about power. Everything is adversarial. The system that Trump exists within, that he's a part of perpetuating, teaches that power is everything and you either oppress others or be one of the subjugated.
When I was a kid, I ended up teaching myself to ignore hunger due to a bundle of things including poverty and eating disorders, so nowadays, I literally don't notice my hunger. I have to set alarms to remember to eat and in the rare instances where I do feel the physical hunger, I rarely notice it as that. I wonder whether people like Trump do the same with their capacity to feel for Human goodness. Forgive the overly poetic phrasing, but it feels like they've sold their soul for the ability to feel safe in the world, because they have opted into the adversarial worldview I described above.
I honestly find it impressive how Reddit continues to find new ways to enshittify the platform
One that I like that is also a curse rather than an insult is "I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are"
I'm glad to hear that you're doing better. I've found that public sector can be more stressful in some domains, because of how overstretched services are nowadays, but like you say, at least you're striving for more than just lining someone else's pocket
By far not the stupidest, but it's one that's coming to mind.
The school was in a poor area and had a mandatory school uniform. One of the rules was that for boys, "school shoes" must be worn, not "boots". In many cases, the distinction is obvious, but in ambiguous cases, the distinction came down to how high up the shoe/boot went. I think they defined a length that was the boundary.
What's silly though is that this length was such that if you were wearing regular school trousers, it would be impossible to discern whether it was a shoe or a boot. At uniform inspections, they would literally have people pull up their trousers legs enough that they could see the top of the shoe/boot, and measure it with a ruler. Inspections were usually overseen by a senior member of staff (not the same one each time).
My brother was sent home from school because his brand new school shoes were 0.5cm too high and were therefore boots. He wasn't meant to return until he'd replaced them, but my mum called the school and went nuts because she couldn't afford to replace them for such a stupid rule. They "made an exception" in this case.
I think what's key here is that you used to be able to do this. I used to use Google assistant regularly and I feel like I've discovered dropped features through frustrated exchanges like this. It's easy to miss that it specifically asked for time when you're in autopilot mode and expecting that if there's an error, it just misheard you
Man, I feel that. Something that I've been thinking about for a while now is how disabled people (whether it's a condition that affects their brain, or body, or both) end up sort of "stress-testing" society.
In this case, your comment makes me sad because I've seen similar instances to what you describe, but also, I am reminded of countless more people who seem unlikely to have ADHD, but also don't do well with tough love. The harmful impact of tough love is more pronounced in people with ADHD though, and that's what I mean about "stress-testing".
This opinion is also heavily informed by the fact that I'm also autistic and diagnosed in my teens. I spent too many years trying to fit myself in a box that would never fit me, and I see so many people who *technically" fit in the box, but seem profoundly uncomfortable. From this angle, autism feels like my ticket to liberation because I think if I could fit inside the box (of societal expectations etc.), then I'd have accepted making myself uncomfortable in a model that wasn't built for my wellbeing.
A friend of mine is a French teacher, and I was discussing with her an idea for how to incorporate Chat-GPT into the curriculum. Specifically, her idea was to explore its limitations as a tool, by having a lesson in the computer suite where students actively try to answer GCSE (exams for 15/16 year olds) French questions using Chat-GPT, and then peer mark them, with the goal of "catching out" their peers.
The logic was that when she was learning French in school, Google translate was still fairly new, and whilst many of her teachers desperately tried to ignore Google Translate, one teacher took the time to look at how one should (and shouldn't) use this new tool. She said that it was useful to actually be able to evaluate the limitations of online translators, rather than just saying they're always wrong and should never be used.
We tried out a few examples to see whether her idea with Chat-GPT had merit and we found that it was pretty easy to generate errors that'd be hard to spot if you're a student looking for a quick solution. Stuff like "I can't answer that because I'm a large language model" or whatever, but in French.
"Resume generating event" - that took me a moment, but then I laughed
The Latin prefix cis- , meaning "on this side of", which is the opposite of the prefix trans- . So a cisgender person is someone whose gender identity matches the sex assigned to them at birth - I.e. someone who is not transgender.
They're value neutral words and are useful words to have. For example, if I wanted to make the point that not everyone who cares about trans rights or gender issues are transgender, I could point to myself, as a cisgender woman.
Sometimes my heart wants to resent people like you for having supportive parents, but that's coming from an hurt and irrational part of me that's valid, but not useful to listen to. I'm glad that people like you and your parents exist, and I'm glad for your comment here, because even though I'm a long way away from my parents, it's useful to be reminded that my experience was not normal and it wasn't okay. Thanks for helping remind me and hopefully others that we deserve(d) a safe family home
Damn, kids these days. Like, I knew that I shouldn't disregard slang as meaningless just because I don't understand it, but I'm realising how despite knowing this, I've probably been subconsciously dismissive. TIL, thank you.
Cis person with many trans friends who experienced the same kind of problem, hope it's okay for me to chip in.
The advice I wish I could've given them is that it's okay if it takes time for you to understand how you want to present your gender, or if you go through a few identities before settling on one that feels right for you. One of my best friends, when I met her, she was masc presenting non-binary and using they/them pronouns, then she considered herself a binary trans woman for a while (and started medical transition), but that wasn't quite right yet, and now she identifies as a non binary woman. I remember each of these internal transitions caused her a lot of grief because it meant re-coming out to the world, and she questioned the validity of her own gender.
If an identity or a way of presenting to the world is a stepping stone to something new, it's not necessarily an "incorrect" label if it helps you along the way. And even if something is incorrect for you and doesn't speak to any version of you, that's chill, it doesn't diminish the significance of the version of you that you feel comfortable being and presenting to the world, no matter how long it takes to find the point you're comfortable in.
I had another friend who stuck with a name that she hated for like a year, because that was the name that she'd told everyone when she did a big coming out and she felt weird "retconning" that. When she eventually stopped torturing herself by sticking with a name she came to hate more than her dead name, she picked a new name and did a small "trial run" amongst her close friends for a few months, to be sure that this time, her name felt right. She told me that she jumped into the name and the personal style stuff too quickly, because she had started HRT and figured she'd had to come out soon anyway, so she needed to have a complete idea of the woman she'd be from the outset, which led to the premature name choice.
And speaking of style, one of my transmasc friends lived for most of his life identifying and presenting as a pretty archetypical butch lesbian. Shortly after coming out, he went through a phase of trying to be a super manly man, because it turned out that his gender presentation was already pretty spot on for where he wanted to be, he just wanted the world to change how it viewed him (in his words, "genderqueer soft boi, rather than spiky dyke"). He explained to me that from the start, he sort of already knew he didn't want to change much about himself, but he felt obliged to mark this as something different from the flavour of gender non-conforming he expressed before, as a lesbian.
The core theme here is feeling pressured to do or be stuff that isn't true to oneself, and I don't think I'd even call these stories "mistakes". A lot is going to change, and the world will look very different to future-you in ways that you can't currently imagine and that's not a bug, that's a feature. It was a rockier journey for some than others, but all of my trans friends are in a better place now than when they started, even if that wasn't what they expected. You'll be facing a lot of pressure from so many sources, whether that's the trans community, shitty transphobes or well intentioned cis folk, and it's not unreasonable to need time to properly process it all and figure out what you want.
Just try to be kind to yourself throughout it, even when the world makes you feel like you should be more than what you're able to be - especially then. You don't need a crystal clear understanding of The Plan (Tm); sometimes a vague direction away from or towards something is enough to get you going.
For anyone curious but not reading the article, a large part of the "something ingenious" seems to be RICO charges.
"Ms. Willis ties them all together by levying one charge against Mr. Trump and each of the 18 other defendants under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO, accusing Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators of functioning as a criminal gang.
American law has long recognized through the crime of conspiracy that combinations of criminals are more dangerous than lone wolves. RICO is conspiracy on steroids, providing for stiffer penalties and other advantages like bringing multiple loosely connected conspiracies under one umbrella.
Georgia has one of the most capacious RICO statutes in the country. "
It does sound exciting, maybe this will have been worth the wait. I'm not even American, but I don't think it's overstating things to say that the fate of the world is (at present) pretty tied into the fate of American democracy. Even the indirect ripple effects from something like this are huge
(Edit: quote formatting)
Apologies for chipping in here, because I'm cis, but I don't feel at all comfortable with playing Hogwarts legacy — Rowling has literally said that she views any success the game may have as an endorsement of her views. My feelings here aren't even necessarily due to a choice to condemn Rowling's stance and behaviour, but also partly a visceral sense of disgust towards that world and the series. I used to love Harry Potter, but I can't anymore. I'm sad about it because I was one of those lonely kids growing up who would fantasise about getting my Hogwarts letter.
My opposition to the game also isn't limited to beef with Rowling's transphobia - over the years I've come to realise how icky the world on the books is, like how Harry becoming a cop after years of suffering under systemic abuse,that's peak neoliberalism. Plus there's all the antisemitic tropes around the goblins. It's just oof and another reason why I'd feel uncomfortable playing the games.
In my almost entirely queer friend group, that's a common viewpoint and when it came out, it was definitely something that would be considered worthy of judgement. For the record, this friend group is approximately 30-40% trans
I've always felt like a lot of the assumptions in Fermi's Great Filter feels off. Like, the way we talk about "intelligent life" feels iffy, both in astrophysics and other fields. I'm not great at articulating this, but if you're one for video essays, Dr Fatima Abdurrahman recently made a video that captured much of what I'd struggled to say on this. (https://youtu.be/_tw0aqmnmaw)
That there is no silver bullet, no quick fix, no "Eureka" moments that happen without work. "Progress" is less an exciting event, more a rhythm made by the repeated struggling against entropy; when you're doing it well, you'll come to hardly notice its beat until one day you look around and everything's different.
You'd think that recognising this progress might be motivating, but it's often demoralising because it demonstrates how unglamorous the work of self-improvement is. You hardly get time to enjoy your achievements, because as you grow, you become aware of how much more there is to do; the burdens on one's time and energy tend to expand as our personal capacities do, so even if one makes incredible progress it can feel like you haven't moved at all — in both your "before" and "after" snapshots, it can feel like you're still barely staying afloat in life, even if objectively, you have massively improved your coping skills.
And the worst part of it all is knowing that it's okay to be feeling like this. You're tired because it's a lot of work, and you're demoralised because the work doesn't end. You're not the only one who has the stake in your life and your wellbeing, and as you grow, this will be underscored by a greater sense of duty towards the systems and people that depend on you; When I was young and very depressed, I stayed alive for my family and I resented the fact that they cared about me because it bound me to life. (Un)fortunately(?), over the years, my attempts to stick around to avoid hurting the people I care about has led to a bunch more people being invested in my wellbeing and I ended up loving those people too. How privileged I am to have such wonderful people in my life, who give me hope for the world and embolden me to keep fighting. And yet, I resent these people too. I have to allow myself that, at least a little bit, otherwise I'd collapse under the pressure of a duty to a world so much larger than I am. The worst part of it all is that I wouldn't have it any other way.
So here I am, still plodding along, despite everything, hoping to make my existence a tiny little monument to resistance, as I stubbornly push back against all-consuming entropic decay. I know that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I, as an individual, does will matter, nor will it last, but I don't care. Well, I do care — the enormity of it threatens to swallow me whole — but I don't care that I care, because what difference does it make? The hardest lesson I've learned is that everyone feels this way, to an extent, and I'm nothing special. In that truth is terror, but also the comfort of solidarity. I may be scared and exhausted, but I know I'm not alone in this. For better or for worse, my life isn't just for me.
Sabaton do have a lot of Nazi fans, but we shouldn't yield ground to them
I've gotten better at saying "I don't know", or "that rings a bell, but I'm not sure, can you remind me", or "what does that word mean?". Because I was The Smart Kid(TM) at school and I carried that on by heading to a prestigious university, I had a hell of a complex about looking stupid. Being smart was so tightly woven into my identity that I struggled to perceive myself outside of a framework of academic success or the nebulous idea of intelligence.
I got a hell of a lot smarter when I learned how to not know stuff though, because I got to learn unexpected things from unexpected sources. I worked on reframing my own intelligence/knowledge wrt my self view, and nowadays, I feel like the thing I'm most proud of is my curiosity, and my openness to learning new stuff.
"In fact, you're usually hoping it's a vagina goo shart because you can just wipe that out with toilet paper and move on with your day."
Oh man, this is relatable. Reading this transported me to past situations where I sat uncomfortable and anxious until I could get to a bathroom and check. Solidarity
Using Google products is starting to feel like watching season 1 of a Netflix produced show - I don't want to invest energy into something that'll just get cancelled.
"The fact that Kratos isn't the same person he was in the old series is basically the entire point."
I always feel a little bit sorry for rage bigots like this, because of how dull their world and experiences must be. Like if he felt that the new Kratos felt narratively unsatisfying, or that his journey felt unsatisfying, that'd at least be an opinion with the potential to be interesting. But nah, it's just "things are different", with embedded implication that different = bad.
There's a Pratchett quote that I always think about in this context, about "lies to children"
As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves.
Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.'
Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.
I could've cut that down more, but I like that whole chunk. I think there is a usefulness in the lies to children approach, if done well. As you highlight though, it can be frustrating when the simplified thing that's being taught isn't just simplified, but straight up wrong.
A book that I love that covers this in an accessible manner is "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochrondria and the Meaning of Life" by Nick Lane
Basically, it looks like a single cell, predatory amoeba of some sort engulfed a parasitic bacterium that was the ancestor to mitochondria, and instead of being digested, it ended up living inside the amoeba, helping to produce energy.
This is a big deal because the way that cells harness energy is by doing some cool biochemistry across a membrane. When a cell has to rely on its main, cell membrane to do this, then the energy production is proportional to the cell's surface area, which means that it's proportional to the cell's radius squared (E ∝ r^2 ) . However, the energy requirements of the cell are determined by its volume, which means that energy requirements are proportional to cell radius cubed ( E ∝ r^3 ). For small numbers the difference between r^3 and r^2 isn't much, but as radius increases, the cell volume far outstrips its surface area, which means that there was an upper ceiling on how big a cell could get while still fulfilling its energy requirements.
Mitochrondria allow cells to break this size limit by decoupling energy production from cell size, because scaling up energy production is as simple as having more Mitochrondria. Mitochrondria have their own independent genome - in the years since the endosymbiotic event, the mitochrondrial genome has shrunk a lot, because it's sort of like moving in with a friend who already has a house full of furniture - no sense in having duplicates.
I read an article recently about the failure of this measure. It attributed a large part of the failure to a lack of training. For example, police were significantly less likely to hand out tickets for minor possession than they were to make arrests (before the measure), because they didn't see what the point was. To them, it was just a significantly more lenient system and the article argued that training could've helped them to see that the ticket isn't meant to be a punitive measure, but a way to pull people towards the increased support.
The police were essential outreach, but they weren't given training to understand how their role was different. The tickets that were being handed out were a standard one, instead of a custom ticket made for this new citation, which would've explained that you can get the ticket waived if you call the support number listed.
Edit: found the article https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/14/oregon-drug-decriminalization-plan-measure-110-leadership-failures/
I don't know what your goal is in being this persnickety about someone else's wording, but you should probably be sure that you're right before you go around correcting people. For example, if we replaced "female model" with "woman", it would make OP's comment way less clear, because a photographer works with people other than just models and that wouldn't be clear with just "woman".
Regarding "male-type person", I would ask you to take a moment to try to imagine a world where "male-type person" is a more appropriate and correct phrasing than "man". Arguing in good faith means temporarily setting aside your belief that "man" is more correct in order to better understand OP's point and their overall point. As an example, OP may not actually be a man at all, but may be perceived as male by people within the hobby, in which case, "male-type person" may not be elegant phrasing, but it's more correct and informative than "man".
You claim your corrections aren't discriminatory, but that's besides the point, because a comment can be "not discriminatory" and also impolite and unconstructive to the discussion.
I agree, this is great. I really liked:
"Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces."
and
"Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. "
I've been getting it wrong since I was around 23. It's often a case of "hang on, am I 23 or 24?" where I'm off by one year. It was easier during university because I knew of my peers' ages and that made my age mean something relative to them. Now, age doesn't come up regularly at all, so I'm more likely to forget and have to work it out as you describe
Can verify, it works. Am horrified and baffled in equal measure.
Though I wonder if even besides adding an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) (writing acronym out for anyone else who would've had to Google it), this might be a useful exercise recovering from outages in general. This is coming from someone who hasn't actually done any self hosting of my own, but you saying you're still finding down services reminds me of when I learned the benefit of testing system backups as part of making them.
I was lucky in that I didn't have any data loss, but restoring from my backup took a lot more manual work than I'd anticipated, and it came at an awkward time. Since then, my restoring from backup process is way more streamlined.
I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.