BlueSwallow2020

"You will not take my throne from me!" You cling to your grand chair so hard your knuckles turn white.

Your son sighs. "Dad. Dad it's lead-"

"Of course it's lead! It's a strong metal, signifying the strength of our country- this throne has been passed down the royal line for 300 years, 15 rulers before me-"

"That is not enough time for that many people!" Your son throws his hands up in the air. "Because it is lead! It is poisoning you! Didn't you wonder why grandpa died at 40?"

"Ah, pfoo! That's the ancestral curse."

the son, upon coronation, receives his own prophecy: “your daughter will tear your castle to the ground.”

now, this is a bit more of a cause for immediate concern, but unlike kings of old, he decides that the best way to avoid this surely gruesome future is to love his daughter the best he can, encourage her interests, and guide her with a steady hand - if she is to ruin his kingdom, after all, then let it be with iron will and care for the people.

his daughter is not violent at all, will only hunt if they promise the kitchens will cook what is killed and will give some to the people, and only takes a passing fancy in swordsmanship (which he thinks is more to do with the jawline of the instructor, not that he says anything). she loves to study and read, and when she asks to go for further education in a different corner of the kingdom, he allows it.

after one year, she returns, and spends the first week back acting shifty. she is always caught ducking out of corners and hidden passages, whispering with staff, and pouring over old maps of the castle layout in the library, hurriedly covering them up when anyone passes.

he privately gets his affairs in order.

two weeks after her return, the king’s daughter approaches her father with a steely look in her eye and a grim set to her jaw.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

Currently, it's marking season for us in the UK. I have an exam board in four hours, in fact, which is where we all go over every profile of every student on our courses, see what results they've achieved, and work out their "decision" - if all is well, the decision is to let them continue the course, or the final degree grade calculated if they're in final year. If it hasn't gone well, the decision is about whether they get to rework the pieces that failed, resit exams, repeat the whole year, or be required to withdraw.

And, as has been the case for the last two years, the profiles are now littered with plagiarism investigations. Every one of those - every single one - will have come in as an assignment that the lecturer received, and started reading, and then with a sinking feeling thought "This isn't your work." Every one had to go to an academic misconduct hearing. Every one is an enormous draw on time and resources, including the emotional reserves of the lecturer.

And I know that's not the main issue! I know in the grand scheme of things, our feelings aren't the most important part of this equation! But as we're talking about rudeness, let me explain:

Firstly, the work itself. You begin reading, you see it's AI. Contractually, we have to read it anyway, and give feedback on why it's shit, and what makes it bad, and that is absolutely fucking soul destroying. Most students who use AI are doing so because they've managed to train their brains to find reading something boring abhorrent, and they want to skip that part; but a ChatGPT-generated report is bland, vague, and utterly devoid of any passion, insight or personality. In short, it's boring. You simply passed your boredom on to us.

Secondly, regardless of your personal feelings about the assignment, it at least had a purpose. It was there to stretch you, and make you think about the topic so you could learn about it, and to test that learning so we can all make sure you have actually learned what you need to. But the slop you handed in, that I now have to mark? What's the point? Literally what is the fucking point of me marking it? You didn't even write it. None of the feedback I'm obligated to give means anything to you. I'm marking ChatGPT, and it can't read.

Which means, not only is it fucking boring, it's actively pointless. Ask anyone in the world what a boring but pointless obligatory task does to your mood. Imagine that.

Thirdly, the misconduct hearing. Because listen, again, the lecturer's feelings here are, once again, not the main point. Students who cheat like this aren't doing so because life is hunky dory. They're stressed and overwhelmed and struggling, and they think they've found a magic way out, and so being pulled into a misconduct hearing - where the best they can hope for is to have to redo the whole piece for a capped mark, on top of all the rest of the work they have (functionally, a bonus assignment), and the worst is expulsion - is a mental breakdown-inducing experience. That, obviously, is the biggest issue.

But, the lecturers know all that, which means we know what we're triggering if we do report it. I cannot tell you how upsetting it is to receive a slop assignment, realise what it is, and then have to make the call to report it. I know damn well how upsetting that's going to be for you. I know how stressful and painful that's going to be. I know this might mean you're going to be thrown out of university. In some cases, I know it means you will be.

I know I could look the other way to spare you that

And oh, that gets tempting. When things are really bad for you, and I see you struggling, and this is your third strike; fuck me but it's tempting to pretend that I can't tell.

I cannot do that.

Which brings me to number four: the soul-bleachingly fucking horrible ordeal that is the misconduct hearing itself. Most people are non-confrontational; I'm no exception. I also simply do not enjoy a sobbing, panicking student sitting in front of me, telling me about how stressed and scared they are and how they're terrified they're going to fail. But that's how these things go.

Our most recent example is an international Masters student. I don't know the particulars for him; but I do know it's not uncommon in his part of the world for families to go into obscene debt, often to loan sharks, to send their kids to UK universities. Failure means more than just academia for him. Having to sit through him turning white and quietly begging us to give him another chance before he left in tears he tried to hide from us was, obviously, much worse for him than us; but it was honestly traumatic. Even now, two weeks later, I can't get it out of my head. There's nothing we can do; but, I feel guilty anyway. I could have looked the other way.

(It wouldn't have passed anyway. It was terrible. But at least he'd probably be allowed a resit - we're still waiting on the outcome of this one, but he may well be withdrawn)

To bring this back to the point of the post:

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Superhuman, the tech company behind the writing software Grammarly, is facing a class action lawsuit over an AI tool that presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—none of whom consented to have their names appear within the product.

Imagine being so full of yourself that you think you can just use the literal most successful author alive's name without his consent.

so then i tried "shag birds uk"

Anyway, early on, I do my rounds one day and get back to my office to record the findings. As I'm looking at one of the photos, I think to myself "Hang on. These look different from the others. They have black heads, not blue, and I think maybe they are bigger. Perhaps these are great tits?"

But of course! As they were still moulting, I wasn't sure; and so, with the wisdom of the terminally stupid, I confidently opened up Google, went to an image search, and there on my work computer in my office in my brand new job, I typed in "great tit chicks."

The results I got were not what I expected. But. Should have been.

I had to IMMEDIATELY go and fess up to my new boss and be like HEY I don't know if you monitor our internet use at all but uuuhhhhhh I can explain. Fortunately she just about pissed a kidney laughing, so it was okay.

Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?

We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.

A male human and a female human are roughly the same size and same coloration.

Meanwhile, male black widow spiders are brown and a tenth the size of females. Anglerfish females are a full foot long and have a bioluminescent protrusion on their heads; males are barely half an inch long with no bioluminescence or protrusions. Male elephant seals are ten times bigger than females and have massive snouts. Male orangutans have big jowls and neck sacs that look like goiters, while females look more like other apes. Peacocks have flashy coloration and a long tail that they can display. The females are brown and simple.

Lowland Gorilla males tend to be 2.38x on average the mass of Lowland Gorilla females. Humans? That ratio is something line 1.15.

Male gorilla canines tend to be about 2 inches long, easily twice the length of some of their other teeth. Male humans have canines the exact same length as human female canines and the exact same length as the rest of our teeth.

Here are some crazy grasshopper mouse facts for those who are not familiar with the most badass mouse species on the planet

- They are primarily carnivorous, and their diet is made up of not only bugs but also snakes, lizards and other mice.

- They hunt like true predators, slowly stalking and creeping up on their prey before ambushing them. They will sometimes let out a screech as they attack.

- Like wolves, they howl to establish territory and have a specially developed throat to produce louder vocalizations. They will stand up on their hind legs and throw their head back to howl- a sound that can be heard from 100 meters away!

- Grasshopper mouse behavior is linked to lunar cycles and they are more active during a full moon.

The place turned out to be Sikh-run and when I showed up for a grab bag they said 'oh that's not really how we do it' and asked what I wanted off the like full dinner menu and made it for me

They were using the app to reach people who needed food and then sending them home with entire meals, like feed-you-for-two-days amounts of food.