I Dont Even Know Anymore

Friendly reminder that Queer is approved by 72.9% of the people, and the groups who don’t prefer it’s use as an umbrella term are straight people, exclusionists, transmeds, truscums, sex-negative people, and sex work critical people (x).

Friendly reminder that aros and aces are excluded only 9.2% / 8.1% of the time respectively while being included  78.9% / 81.2% of the time (x)

Imagine: your home is entirely voice activated. You can run yourself a bath when you’re exhausted and sore without having to get up to turn the water on. You can alleviate your anxiety about having left the stove on without having to leave work. The roomba can find your glasses for you when you drop them and all you have to do is ask.

Now imagine that this is all on a closed circuit! Your TV can predict what shows you’ll like, but it won’t give that information to a company that will use it for disturbingly specific advertisement. And everything has manual overrides, just in case.

Can you imagine a future where every car is self-driving? Maybe even solar powered? Or better yet, apply those same concepts to widespread public transportation! We could almost completely eliminate traffic jams.

My house could feed my cats while I’m on vacation! My fridge could tell me when I’m low on milk! I could brew coffee without getting out of bed!

Hell, most of this stuff already exists!

But nooooo, I can’t have any of it because there are people and companies out there who will actively use that stuff against me and I don’t want fucking Amazon to know what kind of underwear I own.

Mycroft is an open-source home assistant that can run on a Raspberry Pi (a computer the size of a deck of cards), and they have some dedicated hardware coming soon. It's in active development.

Home Assistant is a central hub for smart home devices, also free and open-source, and it can also run on a Pi. Or any other hardware you have lying around.

There's a world of self-hosted software out there that you can install and use for free on your own personal server, if you want to own your data instead of forking it over to the Facebooks and Googles of the world. A great place to start is switching.software. This will take a little bit of technical know-how, but thanks to programs like YunoHost, if you grab an old computer and your tech-savviest friend, it should be possible to have your own server up and running in a weekend.

Humans:

[Image description: Helen Keller sits by a radio, with her hand over it, in order to feel the vibrations of the music playing]

Helen Keller wrote the following letter to the New York Symphony Orchestra in 1924, describing listening to the “Ninth Symphony” composed by Beethoven - who was also deaf - over the radio: 

“Dear Friends:

I have the joy of being able to tell you that, though deaf and blind, I spent a glorious hour last night listening over the radio to Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” I do not mean to say that I “heard” the music in the sense that other people heard it; and I do not know whether I can make you understand how it was possible for me to derive pleasure from the symphony. It was a great surprise to myself. I had been reading in my magazine for the blind of the happiness that the radio was bringing to the sightless everywhere. I was delighted to know that the blind had gained a new source of enjoyment; but I did not dream that I could have any part in their joy. Last night, when the family was listening to your wonderful rendering of the immortal symphony someone suggested that I put my hand on the receiver and see if I could get any of the vibrations. He unscrewed the cap, and I lightly touched the sensitive diaphragm. What was my amazement to discover that I could feel, not only the vibration, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roil of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. How the lovely speech of the violins flowed and plowed over the deepest tones of the other instruments! When the human voices leaped up thrilling from the surge of harmony, I recognized them instantly as voices more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The women’s voices seemed an embodiment of all the angelic voices rushing in a harmonious flood of beautiful and inspiring sound. The great chorus throbbed against my fingers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instruments and voices together burst forth – an ocean of heavenly vibration – and died away like winds when the atom is spent, ending in a delicate shower of sweet notes.

Of course this was not “hearing,” but I do know that the tones and harmonies conveyed to me moods of great beauty and majesty. I also sense, or thought I did, the tender sounds of nature that sing into my hand-swaying reeds and winds and the murmur of streams. I have never been so enraptured before by a multitude of tone-vibrations.

tl:dr

you lose more than half your donation

youtube never states this anywhere

Natural phenomenon of diffraction of light transforms black hummingbird’s wings into tiny rainbows