The BFG of AGI

"I thought I’d post an interesting project I just completed that began as a joke. I call it the Gluten Obscura. One of my favorite things to do in my free time is to build wood wet plate cameras true to the originals, but when talking with a friend, I joked that it would be funny to build one out of a loaf of bread… then my gears started to turn and now here we are.

Using a loaf of country bread as the camera body, I dried it out to make a hard box. I then took the bread from the inside of the loaf and turned it into charcoal on my blacksmith forge to make a black powder that I could then use to make a black paste to fill in light leaks. I used a small pillbox landscape lens and messed up my math on focal length, so the image is out of focus, but hey I got an image using a camera made out of a single loaf of bread."

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

Also, Mr. Aldrin had an active military career before his astronaut days and i'd say he hasn't forgotten how to throw a damn good punch -- just look at his wide stance

10/10 well-deserved punch

additional info

at the time, Aldrin was 72 years old, 6 foot 2 inches, and 250 pounds. Sibel (the man he punched) was 37 years old

Sibel has made multiple "documentaries" about the moon landing being fake and has repeatedly harassed the astronauts involved, in this instance getting Aldrin to agree to the above meeting by pretending to be doing an interview on space for a Japanese children's television show

Buzz Aldrin's step-daughter was present, and in addition to being poked repeatedly and aggressively with a bible (Sibrel wanted him to swear on a bible that he went to the moon) Aldrin felt the man following them into the hotel refusing to leave them alone might pose a threat to her

Problem is, I had the idea to write this way after the deadline ended. So I emailed one of the editors, and she was like, “okay, just get it to me in a couple days.”

So in my haste to bang this thing out, I named the document a really bullshit title, because I like to make myself laugh when I’m under a deadline. I submitted it, and then later came up with a better title in an email.

Wanna guess which one made it into the magazine?

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

Also: about the way subtitles often shorten what's said, the argument is "otherwise people would not be able to read all that quickly enough", but:

Consider that a) people who rely on subtitles usually get good at reading subtitles very quickly, and b) most literate people without relevant cognitive impairments can read text in our heads more quickly than someone can read it aloud. In other words, if there's time for the actor to say it, then there's more than enough time for the viewer to read it.

Yes, some people will still only be able to read slowly, so shortened subtitles may be an accessibility feature. But to force that rather than making it an additional option, means all other HoH people are being deprived, beyond necessity, of the experience that people with normal hearing get to enjoy, i.e. knowing what the person actually said

Someone pointed out that article's from 2023, and that's my mistake! Here is one that describes better where we are today.

So.

Downloads are still available as of time of writing. If you have music you want to keep, maybe go download it.

If your favorites sell music directly, go buy it there.

Do NOT go yell at musicians for being on Bandcamp. Where, one day after this broke, do you expect them to go? Where else can we get DRM-free files?

If the new owners keep Bandcamp Friday and DRM-free downloads, I will keep buying music from them.

Think of it this way: who are we trying to help? Musicians, right?

It won't help musicians to boycott Bandcamp and I have not (as of this writing) seen a call for it that's actually from a musician.

It really won't help musicians to yell at them about being on Bandcamp.

Next Bandcamp Friday I'm going to go buy albums I'd miss if they disappeared.