Author: Brin

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

preoccupiedpepper:

staff:

Here it is: Best stuff first

Extremely handy if you follow a lot of people and hate missing anything good. 

Best Stuff First moves the best stuff on your dashboard—mhm!—right up to the top. 

It’s rolling out this week on iOS and Android, and comes with this Help Center article.  

Thanks! ✌️

Head’s up folks! Tumblr decided to shit the bed and go non-chronological!

This bullshit is being rolled out this week and it’s going to be default!

tumblr_inline_oy15bmgn3v1r1bzpf_540

Tags:

#…holy shit #I saw the original staff post but I missed the part where it’s *on by default* #I don’t use mobile but I’ll have to keep an eye on my settings to make sure they don’t do this to my laptop #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #Tumblr: a User’s Guide

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Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

surreal–memes:

 

itsblehnedict:

oh, yeah, it’s artificial neural networks that do that, they’re the ones who call lots of things “dogs” that clearly aren’t dogs. no other sorts of minds would ever do that constantly

#clear and irrefutable evidence that neural networks work exactly like the human brain with no differences  #look at this weird dog

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(mostly Benedict’s caption) #dog #see also ”Dog or Not?” #(and as a warning tag:) #bugs

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

justice-turtle:

wtf-viz:

Shattered distribution.

i’m sorry i understand this is trying to make a point but literally all i can think is “what the shit kind of graphic design is this”

Recently, I had a practice exercise for Critical Thinking class (Unit 7: How to Lie with Statistics) in which I had to find a terrible graph in a news source and explain why it was terrible.

As such, my reaction to this post is “*sigh* howmuch.net is at it again”.

(In the case of the post I linked, the article was even worse than the graph taken in isolation. Fun fact: as far as I can tell (and admittedly it’s not all that clear), the original data source uses “housing” to mean everything involved in maintaining a residence (such as utilities), but the article strongly implies that “housing” = “rent”. And they casually assume that a household with average income will also have average expenses, and at one point actually conflate income and expenses!)

—

On the bright side, the OP is wtf-viz, which means that the point this post is trying to make is “what the shit kind of graphic design is this”.

Tags:

#adventures in University Land #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #(tangentially)

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colchrishadfield:

Favorite Girl Scout cookies, by state. Seeing this, my state is hungry.

Tags:

#…since when is New Jersey’s favorite Girl Scout cookie not Thin Mint #has something changed in the past ten years? #(okay things clearly *have* changed because I don’t recognise like half of these but still) #does North Jersey love Samoas enough to outweigh South Jersey’s love of Thin Mints? #(Samoas were pretty popular but not *Thin-Mint*-level popular) #home of the brave #food #Girl Scouts

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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justice-turtle:

brin-bellway:

shedoesnotcomprehend:

jadagul:

Growing up, I would often read people describe “the spot on your back that you can’t reach.” Generally in the context of, like, putting on sunscreen.

I was always super confused by this, in a classic case of generalizing from one example. I can still overlap my hands at the small of my back; there’s nowhere on my back I can’t reach pretty comfortably. It still surprises me every time someone can’t do that.

….wait, that’s actually a thing?

I always assumed that when people said that, they meant, like, “the spot on your back that’s slightly awkward to reach so maybe if someone’s putting on sunscreen right next to you they’ll get it for you since you can’t see it anyway”

Me, reading a story with centaurs that has just mentioned them having a scratching post†: “Huh, yeah, centaurs *would* have large swaths of their bodies they can’t reach with their hands. It’s *weird*, trying to wrap my head around the idea of people who can’t reach every part of their skin with their manipulating appendages. What must that be like?”

Me: “…wait, hang on, there are some humans who are like that”

Me: “my *mom* is like that”

(When it first came up, Mom was likewise surprised to learn that I *could* reach every spot on my back. She brought up age and fatness as possible reasons for us to differ on this, but I remember there’s a Shel Silverstein poem about the one spot on your back you can’t reach that expected children to find this a relatable feel, so I expect it’s not that. Fatness could maybe still be involved.)

†Edit: I mean this in the sense of “a post you rub against to scratch yourself”, not the sense of “a post you scratch”.

I was always told this was a sexual dimorphism thing – that (cis) girls could reach the middle of their back while (cis) boys could not, and that it was due to some kind of evolutionary thing about girls having specialized baby-holding elbows while boys had specialized spear-throwing elbows. (hence “you throw like a girl” = you throw badly)

I take it this is all a load of bullcrap?

Probably a load of bullcrap, yeah. Even if it is sex-linked, I doubt those are the reasons for it.

(Mom and I are both cis women, though she has PCOS and I don’t so our hormonal profiles are noticeably different. And I think jadagul (the OP, who can do it) is cis-male, but I won’t swear to it.)

Tags:

#gender #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #reply via reblog

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Anonymous asked: (2/2 I guess) And saying things like “there are affordable areas even in the Bay” is kind of an odd thing to try and placate somebody with when the prices even of empty land in the Bay Area are SO high compared to almost all other areas of the country – especially those areas where there’s a high concentration of households living in or near poverty. Property prices in most parts of the non-urban US are super low VS. the largely-unattainable, sanctified Bay Area. Have you actually compared?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

abilitiesconsideredunnatural:

theunitofcaring:

(I did not get the first part of this ask.) 

Yes, I have actually compared. For many people, living in the Bay is a reasonable financial choice, even if they don’t have much money or if they want to donate a lot. In most parts of the U.S. I could not live with roommates, because places where I worked wouldn’t be so near the places where my friends worked, and I would need to own a car, and I still might pay less than I pay now but probably not so much less as to come out ahead taking the car into account. 

Our house in El Cerrito, 10 min walk from the BART, was $550/bedroom. I do not think I’d end up spending dramatically less than $550 on housing+car anywhere I lived, and I do not think it’s unreasonable to tell people “there are affordable parts of the Bay” when what I mean is “there are $550/mo parts of the Bay where you do not need to own a car”. It was a nice safe neighborhood where I frequently went for walks at night, too.

Moving to the Bay is not an option for everyone! But if you’re thinking of it as sanctified and unattainable I think you are looking at prices in like, SF and Berkeley proper.

That works out to both cheaper than my hard limit price is and cheaper than the rock bottom student price here. And I cheated by inheriting a car but I still have running costs.

I live in an expensive part of Australia but not Sydney level horrible. And our public transport is terrible here- it’s comparitively functional in Sydney and Melbourne but those are expensive or 3 hour commute afaict.

*updates*

International price comparisons are tricky, though.

Like, from what I’ve heard of Australian prices, they tend to spend about the same amount of minimum-wage-time-units for stuff as Americans do, but their minimum wage is much higher. As long as you’re paying for local goods with local labour, it generally works out, but it makes things confusing when you’re trying to compare (or, god forbid, move) between countries.

(I could definitely be wrong, though, I’m mostly going off of numbers I’ve overheard from friends)

(Personally, as of 2016 my household’s average per-person per-month housing+transport cost was…*checks spreadsheet, feeds results into calculator*…about CAD$290. Alternatively: USD$217*, 25.4 minimum-wage-hours*. But we’re in an unusually good position, and I think a lot of people in our area are paying more like twice that much.)

*Using 2016 rates, to match the time period of the spreadsheet.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #home of the brave #Australia #trying to sound reasonably friendly; not sure if successful

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

shedoesnotcomprehend:

jadagul:

Growing up, I would often read people describe “the spot on your back that you can’t reach.” Generally in the context of, like, putting on sunscreen.

I was always super confused by this, in a classic case of generalizing from one example. I can still overlap my hands at the small of my back; there’s nowhere on my back I can’t reach pretty comfortably. It still surprises me every time someone can’t do that.

….wait, that’s actually a thing?

I always assumed that when people said that, they meant, like, “the spot on your back that’s slightly awkward to reach so maybe if someone’s putting on sunscreen right next to you they’ll get it for you since you can’t see it anyway”

Me, reading a story with centaurs that has just mentioned them having a scratching post†: “Huh, yeah, centaurs *would* have large swaths of their bodies they can’t reach with their hands. It’s *weird*, trying to wrap my head around the idea of people who can’t reach every part of their skin with their manipulating appendages. What must that be like?”

Me: “…wait, hang on, there are some humans who are like that”

Me: “my *mom* is like that”

(When it first came up, Mom was likewise surprised to learn that I *could* reach every spot on my back. She brought up age and fatness as possible reasons for us to differ on this, but I remember there’s a Shel Silverstein poem about the one spot on your back you can’t reach that expected children to find this a relatable feel, so I expect it’s not that. Fatness could maybe still be involved.)

†Edit: I mean this in the sense of “a post you rub against to scratch yourself”, not the sense of “a post you scratch”.

Tags:

#is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #reply via reblog

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Just out of curiosity: How do you talk to yourself? Answer in tags (if you want).

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

aegipan-omnicorn:

1. I give myself pep talks in the first person, a la “The little engine that could.”

2. I chide or berate myself in the first person: “I’m an idiot.”

3. I give pep talks in the second person: “You can do this, [my name]!”

4. I chide myself in the second person.

5. I narrate what I’m doing in the third person, as if I were the protagonist in a story: “They rolled  out of bed, early in the grey morning, thinking only: Coffee!”

6. Discuss what I’m doing with someone who isn’t there (either someone from history, my own past, an imaginary friend, etc.)

7. All of the above.

Tags:

#I won’t swear I’ve *never* done 5 but if I do it at all it’s rare #other than that all of the above #though when there’s chiding to be done it’s mostly first-person #and when there’s pep-talking to be done it’s mostly second-person #(which makes a lot of advice on the subject weird because they assume it’s the other way around) #second-person thoughts don’t address me by name that much though #(in early February my brain adopted a habit of calling me ”love”) #(I remember the time period because I thought at first it was some kind of celebration of Valentine’s Day) #(but it hasn’t stopped) #(it’s kind of nice though so I haven’t tried to get rid of it) #((…wait hang on are we talking about thoughts in general or specifically talking aloud?)) #((I don’t talk to myself out loud much)) #((I think when there are pronouns for those they’re usually first-person (sometimes singular sometimes plural))) #((but more often (”often” being a relative term) it’s pronoun-less stuff like ”wait no not that have to do this first”)) #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

(I feel like @itsblehnedict might find this interesting)

[under the cut for non-fourth-wall-breaking infohazards, and also cordyceps spoilers if anyone still cares]

So in my dream this morning I was playing a video game (it might have been a VR game, but the way my dreams work all media is VR media, so I’m not sure if it was *meant* to be VR), and part of the plot was an elephant-induced apocalypse†. I thought it was neat how the game handled that.

(Note: in this game, the elephant is foodborne as well as airborne, and was deliberately developed and put into place by some evil conspiracy. Never reached the part where they explain what the conspiracy was trying to accomplish.)

As you would expect, the game tracks physical infection and memetic infection separately. You can actually survive for quite a while after eating a poisoned cookie, if you play in exactly the right way to keep your character oblivious to the apocalypse going on around them.

But it’s really hard to do that and people normally only stumble into it by accident, because the game performs (limited, one-way) fourth-wall breaking.

If this is not your first playthrough to reach the elephant plotline, the game *knows that you know* (because you’ve played before), and will flag you as memetically contaminated even if your character has no idea.

But it goes farther than that. The plot flag that triggers the apocalypse is finishing your dinner that night. (You then–if you don’t have other plans for the night–go to eat poisoned cookies and watch a poisoned movie with your family, and many other people in other places are doing the same. If you do have other plans, your family does it without you.) There is no in-game indication that an apocalypse will start then (in the main branch of the plotline, you actually *die* that night, and are resurrected by plot stuff later). If the game notices you building a bunker, buying gas masks, avoiding finishing your dinner to buy yourself more time to prepare††, the game *realises you must have read a walkthrough* and *flags you as memetically contaminated* (because why would you be doing this stuff if you didn’t know what was coming?).

—

†For anyone who has not read Cordyceps but still wants to read this post, the short version is that “the elephant” is a disease that is fatal when symptomatic but can only become symptomatic *if you know the disease exists*. If you’re infected without ever learning about the disease, it lies dormant for a few months and then dies out, unless you learn about it during that timeframe. (They call it “the elephant” because it’s pink and you mustn’t think about it.)

††If you say you aren’t hungry and put your dinner in the fridge, the “finished dinner” flag is not set and the apocalypse is postponed. You can eat other stuff later, and as long as it isn’t *that* particular meal the flag is not set. Letting the food rot sets the flag, but you can still buy yourself about three days this way.

Tags:

#cordyceps tcftog #illness tw #apocalypse cw #infohazards #oh look an original post #dreams