A Save 4 Later Blog

Colour Tips by yuming_art

Let’s call this strategy “doom trolling.” It’s one of the defining and most arresting properties of our current A.I. moment, and I’ve come to believe that it’s morally indefensible. There are really only two options for the intentions of A.I. companies when they engage in doom trolling. The first is that they actually believe that the systems they’re building have a nontrivial chance of producing hugely disruptive events — from destroying the economy in the best case to wiping out our species in the worst. If this were true, every reasonable ethical system would argue that there is only one acceptable response: to immediately stop working on any product that might accelerate such a future, and lobby with all of your resources to help force other A.I. companies to do the same. From a moral perspective, any other reaction would be monstrous. The second option is that these A.I. companies aren’t really concerned about these risks, and that they’re injecting these doses of unresolvable doom for other reasons. They might want to amplify the perceived power of their technology at a time when they’re setting up their initial public offerings. Or they hope their performative reports and somber interviews will help them compete for top engineering talent coming from a Silicon Valley culture that’s steeped in this type of doomerism. The venture capitalist and A.I. adviser David Sacks recently suggested that Anthropic was using fear-mongering tactics as a method of “regulatory capture,” which can impede upstart competitors. Any of these reasons would mean that these companies are laundering the anxiety of millions to improve the financial fortunes of a vanishingly small number of major stockholders. This cynicism would be equally monstrous. When it comes to A.I., we’ve become so used to this tone of helpless, stress-inducing prognostication that we’ve lost sight of its strangeness. Imagine if Ford put out a report saying that it feared its popular F-150 trucks might soon start bursting into flames, but that there was nothing the company could do about it because automotive technology was too inevitable and important to slow down.

This scientist is rethinking how to put GPS collars on wildlife

Richard Bischof’s devices aim to make telemetry research cheaper, higher quality, and more humane

Remotely tracking animals in their natural habitats has become a central pillar of wildlife research. But on land, the process often involves fitting a collar around an animal’s neck that contains a GPS tracker and various sensors. This requires capturing the animal, which isn’t just expensive—it’s also stressful and dangerous for everyone involved. Richard Bischof, a wildlife biologist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, sees a better way forward for this field of study, known as wildlife telemetry. He’s now building and experimenting with devices, described in a recent preprint, that would allow researchers to apply collars on animals without needing to capture them. Rethinking how we put collars on animals, Bischof argues, could bring many benefits to wildlife research, such as improving animal welfare and the quantity and quality of data collected at the same time. Science spoke with Bischof about his work and where it’s headed. This interview has been edited for clarity and length...

it's 1pm at the marsh! come on down, we've got

some fern embroidery for spring <3

https://archive.org/details/555-milf-tar/

100% REALLY I hunted this whale noise-wolf howl combo for twenty minutes while it seemed to come from every direction at once before getting close enough to confirm it had a tune by trespassing into a bog.

If you mean how did I make them, I carve the ends of wine bottle corks with a blade, and use that as a stamp pressed into clay.

If you mean where do I source my references, it's a combo of personal photos/experience + print field guides + online photos of animal feet

Strikingly, two democracies with large economies have managed to avoid much of the inflation-driven, anti-incumbency rage of recent years, and have seen their governments re-elected. In Mexico, the leftwing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, have capped the total price of a basket of two dozen essential goods, such as chicken, rice and toilet paper. At weekly televised press conferences, they have praised or criticised specific companies for cooperating or not cooperating with the scheme: an unsubtle but effective form of commercial and political pressure. At the 2024 presidential election, Obrador and Sheinbaum’s party, Morena, raised its vote share from 55% to 61%. Meanwhile in Spain, the more centre-left government of Pedro Sánchez has responded to the Iran war with a national rent freeze. During the previous cost of living crisis, his government imposed an energy price cap, temporarily made many train tickets free and created a state body, the Business Margins Observatory, to watch for and deter profiteering, since some companies use inflation panics to smuggle through extra price rises alongside unavoidable ones. These assertive policies have helped keep Sánchez in office for eight years so far, through three general elections. Other centre-left premiers would love such a lifespan.

[...]

From the Thatcher government onwards, Britain has been a leading laboratory for the experiment by modern capitalism and its political enablers in maximising profits and prices, regardless of the wider social and economic consequences. With the coming wave of inflation, on top of the seemingly endless cost of living surge since the early 2020s, it’s possible that the pressure for Britain to finally pull out of that experiment, and imitate the broad price caps of countries such as Spain and Mexico instead, will become too strong to resist. A majority of British voters have long shared the view of Burnham, Polanski and Common Wealth that nationalisations are needed to get prices under control.

If you’ve never been all that disobedient before, you can and should start really, really small. For example, you can wear the slightly revealing or gloriously trashy-looking garment that makes your mom roll her eyes and sigh despondently every time she sees you put it on. You will feel judged and disapproved of when you put it on, but that is fine. Your goal is to sit with the uncomfortable feelings and continue with your desired behavior anyway.  Saunter down the steps in that highlighter-yellow Garfield crop top with your chest hair flowing over the neckline, and harness as much courage as you can muster. It’s okay if you feel like a beacon of sin. Just keep it moving. Your emotions are not the target here. Your behavior is. You can feel however you are feeling in the moment so long as you keep acting like you’re free.  Do you have a favorite TV show that a partner or roommate vocally hates? Try watching that show around them without apologizing or defensively joining them in mocking the program. At first, you probably won’t be able to enjoy the show while in their presence. You’ll feel self-conscious about everything they find annoying or cringe-inducing about the show, and so focused on their reactions that you can’t relax. That’s okay. Allow those feelings of embarrassment and guilt to exist and pass through you without giving up. In time, you will be able to ignore these reactions more, and enjoy the activity.  You want to see the needle of discomfort moving down just a little, like Link’s body temperature meter in Tears of the Kingdom when he puts on a breathable outfit in a hot climate. You’re not gonna go from roiling hot to frosty cold in an instant. But after a certain point, you won’t be actively in pain anymore. Things are just gonna slowly suck less, bit by bit, until they are finally okay. That’s true of most major life adjustments, I find.  Probably the best way to develop self-advocacy skills while growing in your distress tolerance is simply by telling other people no. Do this without explanation or hedging. Nitpicky aunt wants to hear all about your dating life? “No, I don’t want to talk about that.” Unreliable ex-friend wants you to do them the tiny favor of moving their entire home gymnasium into a new third story walk-up? “No, I’m not available.” Manipulative shift supervisor wants to cajole you into sticking around for another three hours to close? “No.”  As many advice columnists smarter than me have already intoned, “no” is a complete sentence. “No” requires no explanation. “No” is not subject to debate. “No” can be repeated over and over like a broken record if a disrespectful person acts like they can’t hear it. And you can walk away at any time to make your “no” physical and impossible to argue with, when someone has proven they don’t respect your boundaries. 

My recommendation for you would be to slow down the process. If your instinct is to automatically say yes, just don't say anything for a second. It's okay if the moment feels awkward. It's not a weird thing to stop for a moment and think. You can even say "I need a moment to think about that." when someone throws you a question or recommends a course of action that you aren't sure how you feel about.

I am hereby softly advertising the RP server I have joined and grown semi-supersubtly-obsessed with,,,, because I get to draw cats - and so many of them too! For anyone who wishes to join an 18+ warrior cats RP server for the heck of it, I shall leave the ad here for anyone interested:

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Adfeilion

An 18+ Warriors ARPG, open to role-players, artists, and writers! Set in a post-apocalyptic world, some twenty-seven years after a nuclear bomb was dropped somewhere in the Americas, Adfeilion follows four of the surviving clans - MireClan, HazeClan, ValeClan, and RiftClan - as they learn to navigate a world completely foreign to them; one with sunlight. Having lived in a nuclear winter for as long as all of them can remember, with eight months of the year filled with snow and leafbare, the sunlight beginning to stream through cracks in the cloud coverage is a cause for fear, for concern. Tension mounts, a prophecy of old whispered between tongues of cats far and wide, and the cats must learn to traverse a world that should not be quite as strange as it is. "Normal" is a relative term when every cat is just a little bit wrong, but even their skewed version of normalcy is being challenged, the Hum shifting in a way unanticipated, impossible to plan for - change is coming, whether the clans like it or not. Can you survive a world that has already died? Adfeilion is an open-world warrior cat ARPG, meaning that there are few rules in regards to what your cat can and can't do. Want to overthrow your leader and attempt to take all the territories? Go for it! If the dice roll in your favour, you can quite literally do anything you wish. We aspire for a member-driven experience with an over-arching plot that players can directly influence, but as far as the cats, clans, and future of them go, it is entirely up to you, the player. Become the next best leader or the clan's worst enemy, as long as things are kept moderately realistic, without breaking our general rules, you can try for anything you like! Adfeilion offers:

An in-depth, multi-arc storyline that is member pushed.

Realistically grounded “powers”/”abilities” with consequences.

Mutations, without limit! (Mostly!)

A stat & dice system that is beginner-friendly.

ARPG rewards, achievements, and badges.

Our own bot, level and progression system.

A slightly expanded rank system to allow for specialisation within the clans.

All systems are easy to understand but used to elevate RP & the general game, making it an enjoyable time for beginners and those that are experienced!

The fate of the clans lie in your hands, literally! Every action taken IC will have a worldly reaction!

Karma system that will affect how your character is perceived throughout the clans.

Rewards for art, literature, and role-play!