Flappy Sea Pancake

Because poor Dr. Grace was never meant to be up there with a dead crew and no memories :,)

Listen I like your spirit I like your vibe but there was no firetruck. I genuinely cannot overstate how much it very much was a literal ice cream truck

because he looks the fuck like this

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

So he gets pollened and the other perk lord expect something like this:

24/7 just more obviously an asshole than usual

Meanwhile Shen Qingqiu actually:

Shen Qingqiu still keeps up his usual act, which has the other perk lords quite confused. Sick? Ok. He got pollened. But wdym scared? Scared of what?? And all the time???

This... kind of has two answers: Before ChatGPT and After ChatGPT.

Before ChatGPT, there were always one or two per class. I only ever taught/TA'ed for big lecture-hall gen ed courses, and a solid 50% of the students thought it was a pointless or at least unimportant checkbox they had to fill out and wanted to do as little work as possible to get it. But few intentionally plagiarized. Sure, there were some people who turned in essays they downloaded off the internet or got from their fraternity brothers, and they were easy to catch with plagiarism checkers. There was one girl who, memorably, noticed that for weeks no one was checking their weekly writing responses other than to see if they did them, so she just started turning in pure copy-pasted chunks of the assigned readings. These are people who were taking the class because they felt they were required to, who did not want to be here and don't want to do the work because if it's outside their major they feel it's a waste of their time. I think this is a very sad way to view gen ed classes, but it is a very common one.

The more interesting cases were, there were always a handful of students who genuinely didn't know what plagiarism was. Or rather, they knew that downloading an essay off the internet, slapping your name on it, and turning it in as your own was wrong, and they'd never do that... but they genuinely didn't know that copy-pasting lines from the textbook or Wikipedia uncited, or changing a few words to synonyms, counted as plagiarism. They didn't understand why you were supposed to "say things in your own words" if the original source said it better, and they didn't know that just changing a few words around wasn't sufficient. They were taught that plagiarism was wrong, but never why. These are the students who benefit most from the hbomberguy video: because he explains not only what plagiarism is, but why it's wrong, and what you should do instead, in a thorough and accessible way.

Post-ChatGPT, tons of students are using LLMs to write their essays. Tons. It's bleak. There was an assignment where students would write an essay first draft, I would give them feedback, and they would incorporate the feedback into their second draft. Fully half of students very, very obviously plugged my feedback into ChatGPT and had it rewrite their essay for them. It was genuinely crushing. I put in a lot of effort to give every student personalized feedback on how to improve their essay and they slapped it into the slop machine and called it done.

I don't know if they just don't want to do it and don't care, or if they truly think that ChatGPT is better at writing than them and they want to turn in the best essay they can. Probably some of both. And the most frustrating part is I know it, but unless they do something really dumb like cite fake sources (something I have in fact gotten before), I can't prove it to any standard of reasonable proof. So I just have to act like I believe they wrote it. It's bad out there.

Although one unifying theme is:

I would've thought in comparison to high school people would be more interested in building their skills to get their money's worth

There is a significant percentage who are not. They see the degree as a product to be gotten, the grades as a means to get it, and any method of getting those grades is worth doing. Learning and skill development is not what they are here for, Getting The Degree is. That's what they feel they are paying for. Unfortunately, that's what the system incentivizes. It's a whole system of perverse incentives where learning is a fun bonus if you want to engage in it, on the way to Getting The Degree.

My definitive ranking of my least favorite bodies of water! These are ranked from least to most scary (1/10 is okay, 10/10 gives me nightmares). I’m sorry this post is long, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this.

The Great Blue Hole, Belize

I’ve been here! I have snorkeled over this thing! It is terrifying! The water around the hole is so shallow you can’t even swim over the coral without bumping it, and then there’s a little slope down, and then it just fucking drops off into the abyss! When you’re over the hole the water temperature drops like 10 degrees and it’s midnight blue even when you’re right by the surface. Anyway. The Great Blue Hole is a massive underwater cave, and its roughly 410 feet deep. Overall, it’s a relatively safe area to swim. It’s a popular tourist attraction and recreational divers can even go down and explore some of the caves. People do die at the Blue Hole, but it is generally from a lack of diving experience rather than anything sinister going on down in the depths. My rating for this one is 1/10 because I’ve been here and although it’s kinda freaky it’s really not that bad.

Lake Baikal, Russia

When I want to give myself a scare I look at the depth diagram of this lake. It’s so deep because it’s not a regular lake, it’s a Rift Valley, A massive crack in the earth’s crust where the continental plates are pulling apart. It’s over 5,000 feet deep and contains one-fifth of all freshwater on Earth. Luckily, its not any more deadly than a normal lake. It just happens to be very, very, freakishly deep. My rating for this lake is a 2/10 because I really hate looking at the depth charts but just looking at the lake itself isn’t that scary.

Jacob’s Well, Texas

This “well” is actually the opening to an underwater cave system. It’s roughly 120 feet deep, surrounded by very shallow water. This area is safe to swim in, but diving into the well can be deadly. The cave system below has false exits and narrow passages, resulting in multiple divers getting trapped and dying. My rating is a 3/10, because although I hate seeing that drop into the abyss it’s a pretty safe place to swim as long as you don’t go down into the cave (which I sure as shit won’t).

The Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota

This is an area in the Brule River where half the river just disappears. It literally falls into a hole and is never seen again. Scientists have dropped in dye, ping pong balls, and other things to try and figure out where it goes, and the things they drop in never resurface. Rating is 4/10 because Sometimes I worry I’m going to fall into it.

Flathead Lake, Montana

Everyone has probably seen this picture accompanied by a description about how this lake is actually hundreds of feet deep but just looks shallow because the water is so clear. If that were the case, this would definitely rank higher, but that claim is mostly bull. Look at the shadow of the raft. If it were hundreds of feet deep, the shadow would look like a tiny speck. Flathead lake does get very deep, but the spot the picture was taken in is fairly shallow. You can’t see the bottom in the deep parts. However, having freakishly clear water means you can see exactly where the sandy bottom drops off into blackness, so this still ranks a 5/10.

The Lower Congo River, multiple countries

Most of the Congo is a pretty normal, if large, River. In the lower section of it, however, lurks a disturbing surprise: massive underwater canyons that plunge down to 720 feet. The fish that live down there resemble cave fish, having no color, no eyes, and special sensory organs to find their way in the dark. These canyons are so sheer that they create massive rapids, wild currents and vortexes that can very easily kill you if you fall in. A solid 6/10, would not go there.

Little Crater Lake, Oregon

On first glance this lake doesn’t look too scary. It ranks this high because I really don’t like the sheer drop off and how clear it is (because it shows you exactly how deep it goes). This lake is about 100 feet across and 45 feet deep, and I strongly feel that this is too deep for such a small lake. Also, the water is freezing, and if you fall into the lake your muscles will seize up and you’ll sink and drown. I don’t like that either. 7/10.

Grand Turk 7,000 ft drop off

No. 8/10. I hate it.

Gulf of Corryvreckan, Scotland

Due to a quirk in the sea floor, there is a permanent whirlpool here. This isn’t one of those things that looks scary but actually won’t hurt you, either. It absolutely will suck you down if you get too close. Scientists threw a mannequin with a depth gauge into it and when it was recovered the gauge showed it went down to over 600 feet. If you fall into this whirlpool you will die. 9/10 because this seems like something that should only be in movies.

The Bolton Strid, England

This looks like an adorable little creek in the English countryside but it’s not. Its really not. Statistically speaking, this is the most deadly body of water in the world. It has a 100% mortality rate. There is no recorded case of anyone falling into this river and coming out alive. This is because, a little ways upstream, this isn’t a cute little creek. It’s the River Wharfe, a river approximately 30 feet wide. This river is forced through a tiny crack in the earth, essentially turning it on its side. Now, instead of being 30 feet wide and 6 feet deep, it’s 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep (estimated, because no one actually knows how deep the Strid is). The currents are deadly fast. The banks are extremely undercut and the river has created caves, tunnels and holes for things (like bodies) to get trapped in. The innocent appearance of the Strid makes this place a death trap, because people assume it’s only knee-deep and step in to never be seen again. I hate this river. I have nightmares about it. I will never go to England just because I don’t want to be in the same country as this people-swallowing stream. 10/10, I live in constant fear of this place.

Honorable mention: The Quarry, Pennsylvania

I don’t know if that’s it’s actual name. This lake gets an honorable mention not because it’s particularly deep or dangerous, but it’s where I almost drowned during a scuba diving accident.

The Gulf of Corryvreckan is indeed in a movie. It’s in I Know Where I’m Going! from the genius partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

His majesty's castle is stuck doing a barrel roll. Rescue operations are on the way.

Unfortunately, the sky island rescue department has had their budget cut by half by his majesty's treasurer to invest in automation and are now limited in both staff and equipment.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

Things getting generally noisier, more screens/devices, more polyester in clothing. I'm not personally affected very much by lights, but maybe lights are different???

but like, kids generally spending more time in institutional settings (daycares/schools/extracurriculars) would also do it.

I was homeschooled K-12 (for disability reasons) and I really wonder sometimes how being in a "traditional" school environment would have affected me, like, developmentally. The number one thing that I absolutely Need to function and to Want To Be Alive is the ability to separate myself from other people and take downtime when I need it.

Situations where I have back-to-back activities all day are... I don't think I've ever been truly suicidal, but I've had times when the state of being alive felt so incredibly painful that I would cry for hours multiple days a week from the sheer crushing despair of having to live and be conscious through my life.

Sensory overload isn't the exact same thing as pain, but the "hurt" or suffering of pain is itself something that is not inherent to pain and only happens with pain above a certain threshold of tolerance and processing ability. So I think it's accurate to say: in the same way that an intolerable amount of pain hurts, sensory overload HURTS.

But every kid is expected to spend more than 40 hours a week in the same room as dozens or hundreds of other kids, and basically everyone thinks of this as the bare minimum for normal social development and literally cannot imagine anything else.

That is kind of an existentially dark thought to me

And then I remember that the majority of people do things like go to concerts and go to the mall

But that doesn't fully make the horror go away

But unlike the adult in this strip, Calvin’s dad actually APOLOGIZED for yelling at him when he saw how guilty his kid was: