nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations
some estimates are that it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States which naturally raises questions of why a billionaire hasn't just done it, like maybe it's harder than that in practice, maybe they're just greedy and don't want to, etc. etc.
however MacKenzie Scott has donated over $19 billion to various charities so far (legit charities I believe, not the "name a museum wing after me" kind of charities) across the fields of "Education, Equity & Justice, Economic Security & Opportunity, and Health" so maybe take it up with her?
because it seems like there are two possible stories here:
or:
Homelessness is one of those problems I don't think you can fix by throwing money at it, no matter how much. The way to end homelessness is (he said with a weary and exhausted sigh) by building homes, and even billionaires cannot just do that: they run into the same land use regulations and community pushback as everybody else. Actually, probably more community pushback: can you imagine the shrieking which would occur if a billionaire announced they were going to muscle past zoning regs to plop down 10,000 units of low-income housing in a major metropolitan area? People would throw a shitfit.
Note that in a lot of cases, especially in the case of tech billionaires who employ expensive software engineers, it would be in a billionaire's pure self-interest to build a lot of cheap housing in expensive cities. Imagine how much money Jeff Bezos would save if Seattle rents suddenly decreased by $1000/month, and so he could pay all his programmers $500/month less and they'd still come out ahead on net. The fact that this doesn't happen suggests billionaires have only limited ability to move real estate markets on their own.
*nodding* building more homes does seem like a good way of making more homes
In this particular case, the people keeping you down are not 10 billionaires but 10 million millionaires, who want their property values to stay high
Endorsed; I'm gonna self-plagiarize here and just link to my "Who is to blame for high urban rents? Homeowners." post instead of typing it all out again.
(This reblog by @mentalwires was a good addition about the political economy which got us here)
Reminds me of when NIMBYs stopped George Lucas from building a studio near his ranch, so he built affordable housing instead
When the proposal was first announced back in 2012, there was a predictable backlash from residents, who believed that affordable housing would bring crime into the area and lower property values; and head of the North San Rafael Coalition of Residents Carolyn Lenert said that the project was "inciting class warfare".
incredible
You are not safe from this. You, the person reading this, are not safe from this. No matter how educated or open minded you think you are, you are not safe from this. The moment you think you are safe from it is the moment you become the most susceptible.
Its similar to why you cannot put bad people in a class of their own. The moment you do that you stop being able to see the bad things that the people closest to you do a la "my best friend couldn't have said that racist thing, they're not evil."
The moment you think you are immune from this type of backslide into right wing nonsense is the moment you stop questioning yourself enough to keep yourself from backsliding into right wing nonsense a la "I mean im not antiscience, im vaccinated, I just think that fluoride in our water supply is imparting children's ability to learn as fast as they otherwise could without it."
Remember, being progressive means progressing, its about always moving forward. The moment you rest on your laurels and stop putting in effort to keep the progression is the moment you start becoming left behind.
a few months ago i had a sleep study done. the woman who administered the study told me she's been working there for 30 years. she spent the hour or so that it took to apply all the electrodes and sensors monologuing to me about all her various conspiracy theories. the thing that stuck out to me is that much of what she, a medical professional, was saying was true: proven data about how blue light affects our sleep patterns, things like that. but she also wanted me to know fluoride in the drinking water is giving us all mental disorders, vaccines cause autism, SSRIs build up 'toxins' in your body, and of course how trump's administration is going to fix everything. the insidious nature of cult-like belief systems makes being vigilant to misinformation, even in the face of authority, vitally important.
uh yeah okay
Hualian writing music together 💖
Commissions Info: Pinned Post Patreon: ohsweetsweetie Bluesky: ohsweetsweetie
Every writing advice ever: If you’re having trouble with a scene, skip it and write a different part of the story.
Me: If I don’t write in chronological order, I will die
So many Americans seem to think that there is no society, and morality is literal magic. Like, people don't make choices based on a complex interlocking web of desires and institutions and material conditions. The world is good guys and bad guys. Deviance is a literal magical poison that disrupts the fabric of reality. If enough young women dye their hair blue, the crops will fail.
What suburbanism will do to you after enough time dog
Literally atomized to the point of duotheism. "wokeness" isn't a social phenomena, it's a synthetic evil god invented deep state actors that want custody of your kids.
I don't need therapy I need rabid gay people freaking out in my inbox
The thing that gets me about the impending Harry Potter show is like. I'm able to, for entirely hypothetical purposes, put aside my disdain and disgust for the author's full-tilt bigotry and put myself in the shoes of someone who's still a Fan, like I would be if the author hadn't doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on being a full-tilt bigot, and even then, imagining the alternate universe where JKR remained a staunch ally and well-meaning if clueless liberal philanthropic darling, I still can't quite wrap my head around why I'd want this show to be made
Everyone keeps saying it's going to be a Faithful Adaptation Of The Series and I'm just like... okay? This isn't A Series Of Unfortunate Events that got a bad adaptation and they had to go back and try again to get it right. The majority of fans liked and continue to like the movies, a lot, and despite some minor quibbles here and there, they're considered incredibly faithful adaptations. The Fandom isn't exactly divided on this, either.
Like, I imagine a nearby alternate timeline where JKR was never hit by the Idiot Stick That Makes You Hate Women and remained normal, and I remained a fan of a flawed but influential children's fantasy series, and I can't really think of a reason why I would be excited about them trying to make lightning strike a second time. Are people really that mad about Michael Gambon saying "Harry did you put your name in the goblet of fire" animatedly instead of calmly? Or is WB just worried that the incoming demographic of theme park attendees have nowhere near the nostalgic link to the series that millennials would, and that if they don't inject the series back into the zeitgeist, the golden goose might stop laying eggs?
If JK Rowling hadn't gone full terf and this remake was happening then we'd all be wearily rolling our eyes at yet another carriage being hitched to the endless train of unnecessarily remade hits that nobody wants. People would be joking about "they're making a live action Harry Potter now" (the joke of course being that the previous one was also live action this time so they don't even have the normal excuse). People would revive old comparisons of Lion King shots and Mulan shots and put up Harry Potter ones next to them and joke about how expressive the animation is in the original. I can't see any world in which anyone would want this.
Losing my mind at this poor girl in Argentina who found a kitten on the side of the road and adopted it only to find out it was a freaking jaguarundi. Look at that fucking thing. That's a whole ass kiddy cat
Better yet, she got in contact with a local wildlife reserve! She found him and his sister beside a dead animal on the side of the road, apparently quite thin, and assumed they were just abandoned kittens. The female passed shortly afterward but the male was fine- two months later she brought him to the vet and discovered "hey, thats a whole ass jungle cat." There's a good chance Tito will be back in the wild someday, even! IMHO, two kittens on the side of the road, and one didn't make it more than a couple days? they probably WERE abandoned. just dumb luck they got picked up!
LISTEN to those sweet cheeps. to me I hear that sound and immediately think wild cat, but I think its totally reasonable for a teenager to find a kitten this young and think it was a normal cat. Jaguarundi are also really small!
These are TINY little wildcats!
They have really distinct looking faces and especially ears, but
if a layman ran into one of these things where they werent expecting to see one, I think its pretty reasonable they might assume it was just a weird looking cat
New York State Parks official IG posted about an owl they rescued but decided to use only the most wretched photos of this creature, including what EYE think is the best bird photograph ever taken
OP, why would you not share the rest?!?!?!
Me trying to get out of bed in the morning
"Oh bother."
Sophia, the Boston woman from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: what is a stay at home girlfriend, if you please?
me: well, it's a woman who's financially supported by the man she's dating, and she lives with him and usually keeps house and cooks for him
her: and they're not married?
me: well, no; hence "girlfriend" rather than "wife." I know that may alarm y-
her: oh calm down I know about Kept Women. he has no legal tie to her, though? she has no sort of standing with him in the eyes of the law? only his word that he'll follow through?
me: yes
her: and remind me again- you don't have to be financially dependent on a man anymore, right? there are more than like three careers open to women that will let you support yourself at a decent level now? and society isn't pressuring you 24/7 to get married and stop working outside the home?
me: yes
her: so these women. CHOOSE to be dependent on a man. who could leave them at any moment without legal consequence. because they don't like their jobs. the jobs, while imperfect, that let them live on their own, answerable to no-one
me: yes
her: that had better be some absolutely amazing jewelry they can pawn off if he leaves them, then
me: it's usually not
her: THERE'S NOT EVEN SECURITY JEWELRY?!
me: oh by the way they blame feminism for "having to work"
her:
her: I became fully dependent on my in-laws who hated me, after my husband died two years into our marriage, because I was a 23-year-old orphan with no marketable skills in any avenue besides Running A Household and the only men left unmarried in my social circle were widowers thirty years my senior. I also couldn't establish lines of credit as a widow because the merchants said my husband dying so soon meant that I didn't have stable enough income. and that was entirely legal
me: yeah
her: I'm going to go slam some doors please do not bother me
Stop giving men the ability to ruin your life 2k25
Not the point of this post but I'm endlessly amused that Tumblr has rediscovered ghosts as a cultural metaphor for confronting the horrors of the present through the lens of the past in meme format. The essays I could write-
