The Lob.

Tumblr, constitutionally incapable of clicking links:

There are so many people going "scientific confirmation!" "I love having evidence for what we already knew" "it's great to have a source to cite" about a paper they didn't read that was incorrectly summarized by a robot to sell other robots

I am having trouble articulating the dreadful irony here of people gleefully shitting on AI while reblogging an AI-written ad for AI and walking away profoundly misunderstanding human researchers who are cautiously neutral to slightly positive on AI as a whole

The classic "ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water per query" is 3 links in the citation chain away from the primary source that says "ChatGPT uses 500ml of water per 5-50 queries depending on complexity".

Like people really need to get better at actually clicking through and reading "where is this information coming from" and also just outright asking "is the thing I'm being told is shown here, actually what's being shown here".

There was a reddit post making fun of Gamers for hating on Nvidia for releasing a card with 8GB of VRAM, but deciding that 8 GB is actually okay as soon as AMD said so. But the actual image in the post was just of the article about AMD saying so. Literally nobody's reaction to it was shown, one way or the other. We're shown the article, and told about what the reaction to the article was, but in such a way where the mere existence of the article is meant to be proof of the reaction. Not even to mention that time on the same subreddit that someone claimed that "Widespread games fetishizing incest or rape make it seem more acceptable in society.", and when someone asked for proof, their proof was that "The Coffin of Andy and Leyley exists". But it existing isn't proof that it did anything, it's not proof of anything beyond its own existence.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

Behind-the-scenes photo of an unknown woman working on music or sound effects for Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1988.

While no one except Koji Kondo is credited in the "sound" section of the game's credits, it is possible that this is Soyo Oka, known most prominently for her Super Mario Kart soundtrack, who was hired the previous year. She has worked with Koji Kondo and has in fact studied his work before even joining Nintendo, so it is possible that she either did a small uncredited amount of composing work to help him on Super Mario Bros. 3, or is merely doing some technical sound programming instead of directly composing (also uncredited).