RIP to that old man who was snoring when it was raining and pouring

rare example of rhetorical headline with a simple "yes" answer

insisting that if you really want your selfie drawn in Studio Ghibli style you should hire Miyazaki / spend three days and three nights kneeling outside his hut pleading to become his personal apprentice to ensure that it's done in a manner that respects the traditions of the craft

Look, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't get it, when it comes to AI. But it's like this:

In most parts of the US, a residential electrician works only on houses and apartments. They use romex wire, that yellow cable stuff. You run it from the panel to wherever it's going, staple it to the studs, then make up both ends. You need to know basic electrical code but mostly it's pretty simple. A fast learner could be a decent residential electrician inside a month.

I, on the other hand, am a union industrial electrician. I work primarily in hospitals, factories, and research labs. Most of our wire is run in steel conduit that has to be hand bent on the job, which is an art form in and of itself. We work with much higher voltages, much heavier wire, much more complicated equipment, and we need to know much more of the code. Our apprenticeship is 4-5 years and that's only enough to scratch the surface of everything an industrial electrician might do.

And yes - I absolutely get a little defensive when unknowing people compare me to a residential electrician. There's absolutely a knee-jerk impulse to declare that they're not *real* electricians, that they're merely a pale imitation of what I do. But I fight that impulse because it's a *bad impulse*. Resi still takes skill and work, it's just different than mine. We're both electricians. And it's better for us to work together to improve working conditions for all workers than to get into pissing contests about whose job is more "real". And both our jobs are in increasing danger due to the proliferation of low voltage systems that the average homeowner can install and repair without hiring a professional.

So yeah, I do get it. But it has been very, VERY insulting over the last year to hear people repeatedly say "AI was supposed to replace blue collar jobs, not *my* job! My job is ~special~ because it has ~humanity~!"

Your job is not special. It's not more important than my job and it's not more fulfilling to you than my job is to me. And I don't get to insist that everyone start building homes with steel conduit just so less skilled people can't be electricians, and I don't get to yell at people for hiring a handyman to replace an outlet for $50 when my time would be worth $200.

I absolutely understand the instinct that AI art can't be real art because people who use it didn't "earn" it, or that automating art is uniquely damaging in a way automating other jobs isn't because it's "supposed" to be about human expression. But please actually think about what you're implying and who you're throwing under the bus when you say shit like that, and whether it actually holds up to your other values or if it's just a knee-jerk reaction you need to examine.

i’m starting a collection of things insane people do in animal crossing

ANOTHER

some of them are just so good

Woke Putin has run Russia into the ground

Introducing our new president...

WOKE PUTIN

Was anyone gonna tell me we found who Cleo was??? The integration genius on math stack exchange from 10 years ago?

TLDR it was a professor from Uzbekistan named Viktor Reshetnikov who did it because he wanted people to be more interested in the niche problems people would post on there. Cleo wasn’t even his only account, he was doing multiple people

additional detail - he picked very tricky problems where he had a good guess for the answer but was really struggling to prove it. he would post the problem on an alt, then instapost what he thought was the answer as Cleo, and then hope that he could bait other people into doing the work to verify step by step that his solution was correct. and it worked a bunch of times!

previously he had just posted "hey i think this is the solution to this complex integral but i want help proving it" and then got zero interaction

me and stan just fucked up at&t

Digimon is calling me out more than usual lately.

Wage slave markiplier considered nsfw

shayma escaped gaza before the crossing closed and has been struggling to care for her family of 16 in egypt. rent is skyrocketing, and now her brother needs help funding his master's degree. she just lost her childhood friend and her friend's family, she needs support right now.

she didn't ask me to post this, i just wanna show her there's still people out there who care. please help her

Well, I got fired

I won't go into details (because they legit didn't fucking tell me why), but I am currently without a job.

So I would really appreciate it if people considered checking out my Etsy account for resin casts and 3D prints, or my Cults3D account for STL files.

I do NOT need serious donations at this time. Please do not feel obliged to send me money.

I would just appreciate it if you picked something up that interests you, assuming you can afford it.

Thanks!