Daydreams

New Secret Knots comic, "The River". I hope you like it!

ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity.

ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home.

The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR

Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027

Googling UK driver's license and uploading the first image that pops up

Borowing SpongeBob SquarePants' driver's license

Using the Sims 4 CAS to pass the face ID using an old looking Sim.

Keir Starmer's Porn Pass: Creating fake IDs with the personal information of prime minister Keir Starmer specifically to access freaky porn sites.

me and my weird looking dog relaxing in the sun

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click for better quality

By being a jerk, you're actively making your life harder and less pleasant. This is because we're a social species, and we do this thing called "mirroring" usually unconsciously, so people tend to reflect the behavior you put out, back to you.

Also you can intentionally be kinder with people, and they'll be kinder to you.

It was a busy night, and apparently the bar and kitchen were both running a little behind. Mid conversation , a woman strode up to Steff and his friend and aggressively said "I get that you're having a nice time, guys, but some of us are still waiting on drinks, so do you think you could do your jobs?"

Before either could answer, the bar manager materialised.

"Well, he's a glass collector and he's one of the acts on tonight," she said politely, pointing them out. "So, neither of them can help you. But I'm the manager, can I help?"

("I specified that," the manager told Steff afterwards, "because if she's going to be a dick, I'm going to waste her time by telling her why she's wrong and has just been stupid before I help her.")

"Yes," said the woman, now gearing up to get good and annoyed to compensate for her embarrassment. "We've been waiting for our drinks for over half an hour! This is ridiculous!"

"I'm sorry about that," says the manager. "We're super busy tonight, as you can see. What's your order number? I'll check its status."

The woman gave it. The manager looked it up.

"Ah," said the manager. "I see the problem - these were ordered twelve minutes ago, but there's currently a twenty minute wait, as you can see on the board. I'll see what we can do to speed it up, though, and we'll get to it as soon as we can."

The woman grumbled and left.

The manger put her one lower in the queue.

Five minutes later, a second woman from a different group arrived.

"Sorry, it's very possible I'm being a bother and you'll get to it soon," she smiled. "But I just wondered if there's an update on our order? It's been a while."

"I'm so sorry," the manager said, "we're super busy. Let me check for you... Yes, you're still in the queue. We'll get to you as soon as possible, shouldn't be long now."

"Oh!" says the woman. "No, no worries, I just thought I'd double check to make sure we hadn't somehow dropped off the system. Thank you!"

She left, and the manager put her one higher in the queue. When her order was made, the manager added an extra bottle of beer, and a little note that said "Sorry for the wait :)"

And I tell this tale because, the thing is... If this is typical behaviour, that first woman probably goes her whole life never quite being happy, never quite content, always missing out on free moments of human connection. By contrast, the second woman goes her life getting those little gestures, being seen that little bit earlier, having a slightly smoother time of things.

And neither probably even realises. In a thousand small ways, Second Woman has a happier time than First Woman, entirely down to their behaviour.

By being a jerk, you're actively making your life harder and less pleasant. This is because we're a social species, and we do this thing called "mirroring" usually unconsciously, so people tend to reflect the behavior you put out, back to you.

Also you can intentionally be kinder with people, and they'll be kinder to you.

It was a busy night, and apparently the bar and kitchen were both running a little behind. Mid conversation , a woman strode up to Steff and his friend and aggressively said "I get that you're having a nice time, guys, but some of us are still waiting on drinks, so do you think you could do your jobs?"

Before either could answer, the bar manager materialised.

"Well, he's a glass collector and he's one of the acts on tonight," she said politely, pointing them out. "So, neither of them can help you. But I'm the manager, can I help?"

("I specified that," the manager told Steff afterwards, "because if she's going to be a dick, I'm going to waste her time by telling her why she's wrong and has just been stupid before I help her.")

"Yes," said the woman, now gearing up to get good and annoyed to compensate for her embarrassment. "We've been waiting for our drinks for over half an hour! This is ridiculous!"

"I'm sorry about that," says the manager. "We're super busy tonight, as you can see. What's your order number? I'll check its status."

The woman gave it. The manager looked it up.

"Ah," said the manager. "I see the problem - these were ordered twelve minutes ago, but there's currently a twenty minute wait, as you can see on the board. I'll see what we can do to speed it up, though, and we'll get to it as soon as we can."

The woman grumbled and left.

The manger put her one lower in the queue.

Five minutes later, a second woman from a different group arrived.

"Sorry, it's very possible I'm being a bother and you'll get to it soon," she smiled. "But I just wondered if there's an update on our order? It's been a while."

"I'm so sorry," the manager said, "we're super busy. Let me check for you... Yes, you're still in the queue. We'll get to you as soon as possible, shouldn't be long now."

"Oh!" says the woman. "No, no worries, I just thought I'd double check to make sure we hadn't somehow dropped off the system. Thank you!"

She left, and the manager put her one higher in the queue. When her order was made, the manager added an extra bottle of beer, and a little note that said "Sorry for the wait :)"

And I tell this tale because, the thing is... If this is typical behaviour, that first woman probably goes her whole life never quite being happy, never quite content, always missing out on free moments of human connection. By contrast, the second woman goes her life getting those little gestures, being seen that little bit earlier, having a slightly smoother time of things.

And neither probably even realises. In a thousand small ways, Second Woman has a happier time than First Woman, entirely down to their behaviour.

I know I come across as a huge bitch when I say this but I have very low tolerance for people talking about how they were “traumatized” by the contents of a book. were you? were you really? or were you upset and disturbed by the concepts you encountered in a book that your next door neighbor experienced first hand? cry me a river, but while you were reading a book your classmate was getting beaten or raped at home or tortured in an institution, your neighbor was watching his dad getting tazed by cops or administering narcan to his mother, your playmate from that time at the fair was getting deported to be shot at or starve or imprisoned in a detention center and forced to sleep in her own filth… because these things happen to people! To children exactly like you but for some unlucky stroke of fate! If you didn’t read about it in a book, you’d hear about it somewhere else. On the school bus, maybe, from Natalie telling you about how her dad used to get her drunk and touch her. Or maybe at the grocery store, witnessing an ICE raid or a homeless man get his teeth kicked in. Or maybe walking into a dentist’s office and watching some news anchor explaining how it’s actually fine to drop a bomb on relief workers, or about how many tweens the President may have molested and if we should care, or if that teenager who just got shot for carrying a grocery bag wrong had it coming, or or or or—

A group of moral crusaders, in this case "Collective Shout", and in that old case "Warriors for Innocence" campaigned and put pressure on corporations to get rid of "obscene" content, which ended up deleting the works of many creators.

Thankfully in the case of livejournal and "warriors for innocence" we got the miracle of AO3 out of the ashes.

Very, very early on, Dreamwidth was also targeted by a similar group, if not the very group that targeted LJ.

Instead of buckling to pressure, Dreamwidth broke with PayPal, and found a new way for users to pay for any features they wanted.

2) the unsexiness of the Velcro sound

3) the barely-qualifies-as-kick of the leg kick

4) the fact that I truly cannot tell if the slip was planned or not