who give a shit

Someone will point out the disproportionate popularity of White male characters and people will come out of the woodwork to go 'that's not racism or misogyny it's just this character is more interesting/hot/relatable' as if the very notion that White men are more interesting/hot/relatable than women or characters of colour isn't literally racism and misogyny. Thanks for proving the point!

"the white male characters are just written better than the women and poc!" and do we think that there might be a reason for that? Such as misogyny and racism, for example?

This is kinda ominous ngl

Gotta compliment him on his reflexes. No hesitation. Just described exactly what he was seeing, regardless of what it was.

[VD: A weatherman is giving a report and pointing to a map, saying "feel like temperatures really take a tumble too, because after the storm-" before he is interrupted by the screen going black and then displaying a picture of some baby spinach. He says, "um," then immediately points to the screen and confidently announces, "this is baby spinach." /End VD]

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

i’m doing fine i’m doing really fucking fine this is the finest anyone’s ever done it

tornamdo warning

I don’t really dislike the prevalence of reproductive organs in art per se, i just wish we also saw other organs represented as such

I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a solid rose quartz gallbladder on my coffee table

"But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn't mean it's going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there's some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I've got cancer. Thankfully, it's very treatable, but I've got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible. If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors." If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong. "And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis." This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes. This is another key to understanding – and thus deflating – the AI bubble. The AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job. This is key because it helps us build the kinds of coalitions that will be successful in the fight against the AI bubble." - Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI