'The machines we have now are not conscious', Lunch with the FT, Ted Chiang, by Madhumita Murgia, 3 June/4 June 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/c1f6d948-3dde-405f-924c-09cc0dcf8c84

just saw that the supreme court voted nine-zip to uphold the court order to "facilitate the return of" kilmar garcia back to the states. do you have any idea how bad you gotta fuck up to get these nine people in particular to all agree you fucked up???

It's a sad sad day when the bar is so low that "SCOTUS unanimously agrees that lawful American residents are entitled to basic due process/habeas corpus and protection from being illegally deported to terrorist prison and therefore should be returned to their family by the Gestapo ICE" counts as genuinely good news, but uhhhh, here we fuckin are.

So I just now learned about Stagecoach Mary and how have I never heard of this absolute LEGEND of a woman before

Mary (far right) and the local baseball team

Anyway sorry for gushing I just now heard about her and I’m in love

I’ve heard of her, but godDAMN, if her story doesn’t bear repeating. ^w^

She has her own wikipedia page. Enjoy.

There are several documentaries about her, too. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6004312/

"Screech Owl awakening."

Bird legend and life. 1908.

Internet Archive

This is my exact expression when waking up too.

I think kafka’s diaries are the strongest evidence that journaling is not necessarily good for your mental health

it's because he didn't use washi tape

This is a good reason to have scientific studies saying stuff like, "On average, trans people report happiness when they transition with loving family support and unhappiness when people dump acid on their head," like, yes it is intuitive, yes we knew that, but someday the study that is being passed around under the heading "water is wet," is going to be used to guide a court decision. And sometimes, when the the weather is fair and God smiles, it will result in some judge pounding the anti-trans arguments absolutely flat with a level of precise violence heretofore only seen in people making schnitzels, and that is a thing of beauty.

In Prince's funky name, amen.

Millennial here. All the above and:

Please send me the training or tutorial in a written format with maybe some screenshots if necessary. I don't want a video tutorial. I don't want to waste time trying to scroll to the exact moment in the instructions that I need and then have to pause and replay it because I missed the .01 seconds of actually relevant information.

Please. Text. Maybe some images for clarification. I can read. I promise.

Skimmable, SEARCHABLE instructions. If they're long, there should be a hyperlinked table of contents.

In terms of accessibility as well, screenreaders have their issues, but how much worse are autogenerated captions?

can’t stop looking at this mallard with a gray beak…this is the uncanny valley for ducks

@elodieunderglass for your shiny collection!

it is weird that celiac stuff has become part of the 'culture war'. because it's literally just a medical thing.... I get super anemic unless I cut a certain protein out of my diet, because it bulldozes the villi in my intestines. but if I post about it, right-wingers send me gore images. I guess you can't expect shitty people to be logical, but I've even heard lefty people make fun of gluten stuff, and it's like why are you mad about this??? why are you pissed off that I'm eating bread that doesn't taste as good so that I can have blood in my body? it's so morally neutral.

I'm sorry, I know you weren't actually looking for an explanation but I always have a rant about this locked and loaded.

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

The fun flipside of this is that I've seen people who are more right wing become aggressively pro regulation and pro accommodation when they or their family members have to suddenly take on the individual burden of making up for a society that doesn't include them by default.

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

Turns out that everyone in the US with celiac is already constantly haunted by the possible implosion of the FDA because food regulation is an up-close and personal part of our daily lives that most people would rather not think about.

Weirdly, I like British women’s fiction. I don’t know if you’ve seen them - books with titles like The Littlest Cupcake Shop On the Corner. Christmas At The Bookshop Bus Cafe. Wedding Cakes of Hopes and Dreams. The Littlest Coffee Shop In the World For Orcs and Fairies. Breakfast At The Dragon Tea Shop. Christmas Breakfast At the Dragon Tea Shop. Baby Breakfast at the Baby Dragon Tea Shop and Independent Women’s Soft Play Centre. Long Overdue Mental Breakdown at the -

They are largely produced by British author Jenny Colgan, with packs of ceaseless imitators snapping weakly at her heels, and occasionally people like Trisha Ashley, who used to be funny. In Australia you have Kerry Greenwood’s weird right-wing-Zionist, left-wing-everything else baker. They all have the same covers.

At any rate, they’re all books about liberated women doing pink-collar jobs that are Truly Meaningful, like owning their own bakery, combined with fantasies of property ownership and independence. Trisha Ashley used to attempt being vaguely witty, Kerry Greenwood used to attempt being vaguely feminist with it, and in an attempt to be #heartwarming Jenny Colgan will throw in some large-eyed refugees or campy trans gay people or other side characters. All pretty dire!!! but I still read a lot of them!! And in 2012 I started writing this essay, saved it as a draft and forgot. But they’re still at it. Anyway here it is:

A fascinating thing about all of those writers I’m picking on specifically is that they’ve all written a Baking Woman character - or multiple ones! - who specially goes out of her way to tell us things like :

These characterisation choices are all deliberate and are intended to paint a no-nonsense, down to earth, relatable woman. She’s the salt of the earth! She isn’t needy, and she doesn’t put up with people who are! She’s relatable!!

At the same time, their motivation for being “bakers” instead of any other useful profession is because the authors don’t have to think too much about it they can just copy and paste the same plots / it’s unthreateningly pink collar / lots of people dream of running a baby kitten wedding dress bakery chocolate shop because they make cakes for work sometimes these women truly love feeding people 🥹 they are Nourishing… for the Soul….. these women do it because they love to brighten the days of the grey-faced rat-race office women with a little pink and sugar and sparkle and sunshine… wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world just went out of their way to spread a bit more kindness?

As a result, without meaning to, Jenny Colgan and her pack of imitators have created these self-deluding, deliciously toxic, hateful-hearted, nasty little protagonists!

Every baker-character lauding herself for her magical-realism, cures-the-world, spoonful-of-kindness, supernaturally-delightful baking powers is a lazy fraud, but worse, actively deceiving the audience, because she just admitted that she can’t bake GF well. Stupid wench lol. that just means you’re a shitty baker who doesn’t even try.

Like, every single one of those bullet points reveals an unpleasant character with a rotten element. An unkind, deceitful person who “wants to feed the world” - but not if her own friends bring their own needs to the table! An unaccomplished, mediocre baker who can’t do anything challenging. In fact, a baker so bad at her job that she can’t bake without a single common protein. A person who’s openly excited to be a bully, if she can bully without consequences.

And because of the “culture war” thing, every single author has been able to blithely sail along in her belief that her little angel protagonists are justified in… being mean about medical needs? . And because the depressed, anxious, fearful, unhappy straight cis white women who buy these books ceaselessly are not the type to notice - because usually they’re also the first people in line to bully - nobody in the audience notices either! So these books are secretly about these truly hateful and evil women, who trick various straight men into bonking them, and keep the mask on with everyone, but people like you and I, who are like: “Girl WHAT? You poisoned your friend on PURPOSE? Girl???!” And getting a WHOLE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THESE CUPCAKES OF HOPES AND DREAMS LMAO.

Anyway these authors make bank! Other authors need the electric bill paid by KoFi but chicklit writers make a wage on this kind of secret, sour politics. Even ChatGPT would hesitate before doing this!!! It’s delicious

Excluding the crucial fact that office jobs pay you an income….if staying home to raise children and do chores and bake bread was really so much easier and more joyful than working in an office on some objective level, why aren’t men doing it? Why aren’t they chomping at the bit to be ~leisurely house husbands~ to a working wife? Why aren’t they stepping up to depend solely on someone else’s income in exchange for round-the-clock domestic labor, if it’s really as blissful and their propaganda suggests? Curious.

https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

I remember this literally being enough of a weird phenomena to be reported on by the evening news in the mid 2000s. A whole-ass segment on ABC's world news evening show just about how weird it is that this name is so popular for girls now.

"came back wrong" what about Came Back Afraid. You used to be brave. Too brave maybe, defying the odds at every turn, a fighter, cocky, playing with fire, first to throw yourself at the enemy. Until one day it all caught up to you. You came back, somehow, but now you know all too intimately how it feels to lose, to die, to be destroyed. Now you flinch and freeze and cower at the slightest provocation. Who even are you now if you can't be brave? The grave may have let you go, but the mortal fear still grips you tighter than ever.