sinnahsaint:

enki2:

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Which is why it’s important to not be mean.

Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.

I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.

It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.

It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.

They are not your enemy. They are victims.

okay wait ive never watched supernatural but is destiel canon?

- Anonymous

goldrushzukka:

i wish there were an easy answer to this question

milf-adjacent:

milf-adjacent:

koobyn:

cryptotheism:

cryptotheism:

The 2024 republican primary is gonna be buck wild.

De Santis: “Hello median American voter, the only thing I have for you is transphobia.”

Trump: “Ron De-sanctamonius you’re little pudding fingers boy.”

Biden: “Back in Scranton we used to make a thing called Dirt Nachos.”

Why is Biden in the Republican primary

Because the DNC is already saying they’re not having a primary and Biden felt left out

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They’ve said very quietly like 5 seperate times that they will ignore any primary results and simply select Biden for re-election. Remember that recent polling says ~70% of Americans and ~55% of registered democrats want a different democratic candidate.

chinese room 2

lumsel:

So there’s this guy, right? He sits in a room by himself, with a computer and a keyboard full of Chinese characters. He doesn’t know Chinese, though, in fact he doesn’t even realise that Chinese is a language. He just thinks it’s a bunch of odd symbols. Anyway, the computer prints out a paragraph of Chinese, and he thinks, whoa, cool shapes. And then a message is displayed on the computer monitor: which character comes next?

This guy has no idea how the hell he’s meant to know that, so he just presses a random character on the keyboard. And then the computer goes BZZZT, wrong! The correct character was THIS one, and it flashes a character on the screen. And the guy thinks, augh, dammit! I hope I get it right next time. And sure enough, computer prints out another paragraph of Chinese, and then it asks the guy, what comes next?

He guesses again, and he gets it wrong again, and he goes augh again, and this carries on for a while. But eventually, he presses the button and it goes DING! You got it right this time! And he is so happy, you have no idea. This is the best day of his life. He is going to do everything in his power to make that machine go DING again. So he starts paying attention. He looks at the paragraph of Chinese printed out by the machine, and cross-compares it against all the other paragraphs he’s gotten. And, recall, this guy doesn’t even know that this is a language, it’s just a sequence of weird symbols to him. But it’s a sequence that forms patterns. He notices that if a particular symbol is displayed, then the next symbol is more likely to be this one. He notices some symbols are more common in general. Bit by bit, he starts to draw statistical inferences about the symbols, he analyses the printouts every way he can, he writes extensive notes to himself on how to recognise the patterns.

Over time, his guesses begin to get more and more accurate. He hears those lovely DING sounds that indicate his prediction was correct more and more often, and he manages to use that to condition his instincts better and better, picking up on cues consciously and subconsciously to get better and better at pressing the right button on the keyboard. Eventually, his accuracy is like 70% or something – pretty damn good for a guy who doesn’t even know Chinese is a language.

* * *

One day, something odd happens.

He gets a printout, the machine asks what character comes next, and he presses a button on the keyboard and– silence. No sound at all. Instead, the machine prints out the exact same sequence again, but with one small change. The character he input on the keyboard has been added to the end of the sequence.

Which character comes next?

This weirds the guy out, but he thinks, well. This is clearly a test of my prediction abilities. So I’m not going to treat this printout any differently to any other printout made by the machine – shit, I’ll pretend that last printout I got? Never even happened. I’m just going to keep acting like this is a normal day on the job, and I’m going to predict the next symbol in this sequence as if it was one of the thousands of printouts I’ve seen before. And that’s what he does! He presses what symbol comes next, and then another printout comes out with that symbol added to the end, and then he presses what he thinks will be the next symbol in that sequence. And then, eventually, he thinks, “hm. I don’t think there’s any symbol after this one. I think this is the end of the sequence.” And so he presses the “END” button on his keyboard, and sits back, satisfied.

Unbeknownst to him, the sequence of characters he input wasn’t just some meaningless string of symbols. See, the printouts he was getting, they were all always grammatically correct Chinese. And that first printout he’d gotten that day in particular? It was a question: “How do I open a door.” The string of characters he had just input, what he had determined to be the most likely string of symbols to come next, formed a comprehensible response that read, “You turn the handle and push”.

* * *

One day you decide to visit this guy’s office. You’ve heard he’s learning Chinese, and for whatever reason you decide to test his progress. So you ask him, “Hey, which character means dog?”

He looks at you like you’ve got two heads. You may as well have asked him which of his shoes means “dog”, or which of the hairs on the back of his arm. There’s no connection in his mind at all between language and his little symbol prediction game, indeed, he thinks of it as an advanced form of mathematics rather than anything to do with linguistics. He hadn’t even conceived of the idea that what he was doing could be considered a kind of communication any more than algebra is. He says to you, “Buddy, they’re just funny symbols. No need to get all philosophical about it.”

Suddenly, another printout comes out of the machine. He stares at it, puzzles over it, but you can tell he doesn’t know what it says. You do, though. You’re fluent in the language. You can see that it says the words, “Do you actually speak Chinese, or are you just a guy in a room doing statistics and shit?”

The guy leans over to you, and says confidently, “I know it looks like a jumble of completely random characters. But it’s actually a very sophisticated mathematical sequence,” and then he presses a button on the keyboard. And another, and another, and another, and slowly but surely he composes a sequence of characters that, unbeknownst to him, reads “Yes, I know Chinese fluently! If I didn’t I would not be able to speak with you.”

That is how ChatGPT works.

tiny–cryptid:

OK this question has been bugging me all morning so y'all please let me know

did your childhood vomit bowl also double as a popcorn bowl?

Yes

No

Vomit bowl??? (see results)

bc ours did nd I never thought much of it as a kid but know I’m thinking about it and it feels kinda gross? so pls tell me if this experience was universal or not it will haunt me forever otherwise

onyxedskies:

what, if any, of your joints/bones pop or crack (other than your back)

fingers/toes

wrists/ankles

neck

knees

hips

elbows

collarbones

sternum

multiple (say in tags!)

are you guys ok???

i’ve experienced popping and cracking in all of the above so i wanna know how normal this is

cryptobranchid:

cryptobranchid:

cryptobranchid:

i think one of the funniest things ever is how many rock and metal bands are just four or five identical white dudes with long brown hair parted in the middle. like they’ve gotta be cranking these dudes out in a factory at this point. they don’t even have to be in the same genre, you can find them anywhere. they’re like some kind of metal fungus.

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these are all different bands

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i would love to argue with this but you will never fucking believe what i look like

hoothootmotherf-ckers:

an under-discussed feature of chronic illness + pain is how fucking boring it is. Like I know that I will get better and stop hurting if I lie down with my eyes closed in a quiet dark room but holy fucking shit if I do that for five more minutes today I’m going to totally lose my marbles.

c3rvida3:

swiftrunnerfelidae:

c3rvida3:

I think Joan of Arc’s fursona would be a dog called Joan of Bark, but my partner thinks it would be a phoenix, which seems insensitive to me, but neither of us are furries, so I guess we don’t really get a say either way.

I promise I’m not trying to be pretentious here.

Jeanne d’Arc’s last name is d’Arc.  An overly-literal translator insisted it stood for “of Arc”, and that’s why we know her as Joan of Arc.  At the time, she was more commonly known as “Jeanne la Pucelle”, meaning “Joan the Maiden” or “Joan the Virgin”.

anyways since her main attack strategy was “hit them until they stop moving” I think she’d be a gorilla.

*taking notes* What else do you know about this beautiful world?