[-] Stardust@kbin.social 9 points 5 months ago

There is a way they could make the majority of it noise - if they reduced their expectations to only picking up a single type of signal, like thinking of pressing a red button, and tossing anything that doesn't roughly match that signal. But then they wouldn't have their super fancy futuristic human-robot mind meld dream, or dream of introducing a dystopian nightmare where the government can read your thoughts...

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 39 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I remember when gay people couldn't get married. I remember when I never saw a fellow trans person on TV who wasn't a fictional depiction of a serial murderer played by a cis guy. I remember when we almost never had cops caught on camera so their brutality was an open secret.

But 'steady' is a bit inaccurate.

I've seen actual people with family from Gaza online say that they want Biden re-elected because he may suck balls, but Trump will outright throw protestors into concentration camps.

Like... Trump outright said he's bringing the next Reich. And loves this murdering Palestine people business. So yeah, this is a trolley problem where on one track you run over some people, and on the next track you... run over those same people plus extra. So in this context, saying you're going to refuse to switch tracks to save anyone whatsoever is indeed kinda demanding perfection in a situation where the only options are horrifically flawed and no one really wants to do them, but if we had wanted to really do something about it, we all shoulda fucking voted in the primaries.
That, and also maybe this whole thing could have been avoided if Sanders hadn't made some guffaws. I know he successfully pissed me off and all he needed to do was not go talk to a talk show host with known transphobia and that painful comment about Black southerners. Who knew it turned out that asking Sanders not to support transphobes was demanding perfection?111? /s

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 20 points 5 months ago

Dunno if you want a serious answer, but 'press start' titlescreens that start up an animation if you leave it unpressed too long are a throwback to when if a screen showed the same image for too long, it would fry the image on to the screen and leave a little ghost image, so screensavers were a screen saver. This allowed one to demo software and just leave it running without worrying about damaging the product hardware.
These days however it is totally unnecessary.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Make a small area, fence it off if you must, where you just let stuff grow wild and do zero maintenance (except maybe removing nasty invasives). The local wildlife will thank you even if it's just a couple feet. I did that and I get a ton of bees and butterflies.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 15 points 5 months ago

The thing about his movie is that he was like, almost okay. Iron Man I was about him learning that selling weapons = bad. He could have continued his moral development.
Instead, we got him fighting Captain America over a very stupid implementation of 'oversight' (coming from the guy who refuses to let gov. oversee his iron man development), being creepy to some random boy he just met (actually twice - first Peter and then some kid I don't remember; in a better set of movies I don't think Peter would be very thrilled to realize Iron Man was advocating for Peter to get outed in a national registry), and having a snit fit about how he doesn't want to help Unsnap people who died because he personally is OK with his future with his daughter who may or may not be a robot he built to mime having humanity.

What makes him really insufferable for me is his fans who think Captain America is EVIL for daring to snub poor Tony, and that Tony should go date Loki (no I'm not kidding; while I am happy with Loki being queer, I really can't see the Marvel Universe Tony being a good date for, well, anyone ever, nor Loki being a good date until he works out his genocidal tendency issues at which point he threatens to become alas a much less interesting character).

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 11 points 5 months ago

While arguably Batman could use his wealth better (especially in versions where he's richer than Luthor, because you don't get to be richest guy without being a major asshole who does things like force workers to pee in bottles), the other guy/gal also has a point. The comic book universe isn't our universe, it has aliens invading and Spwecial People who have to be fought by other special people. Batman is basically super-powered the way he can run a marathon, run a chemical analysis and synthesize a new cure for something overnight, and jump 10 feet, they just pretend otherwise.

You might enjoy Harley Quinn where Batman gets arrested for tax fraud.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 10 points 5 months ago

Uhh it means the hungry person is no longer hungry. That's pretty meaningful to the hungry person.
If you mean it doesn't mean anything to you, then that's your deal.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 12 points 7 months ago

Because most sex workers are grown ass adults and should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies without getting arrested for it? Not everywhere is as backwards as the USA.

What they should really do is permanently ban US tourists from it. /s

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Extinguish the left is very much an attainable goal in their view. They almost stole the presidency in an insurrection. They were literately going to murder Mike Pence. The next time around we might have a more competent conservative president who manufactures an emergency and then we are literately fucked.
Something like 'murder a fuckton of people' doesn't need an easily definable goal post: that there are always more people to murder who don't quite meet your standards is a FEATURE, not a bug.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 32 points 1 year ago

I mean, there have been examples of government funded vouchers ending up going to scam charter schools because Republicans are also deregulating private schools. There are lots of horror stories about charter schools.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago

Uh people who get raped want abortions.
No one wants abortions for /funsies/, you mean.

[-] Stardust@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago

@Helvedeshunden

Obvious answer: computers.

I wish we got a bidet but my family decided against it. x_x

3

The Problem

The biggest problem with the 'trying to do reform online' is that people are physically separated from each other, and most traditional protest is physical.

Short list of traditional stuff we can still do:
Voting
Informing of protests organized by others
Sending letters
Sending money

Less Traditional Solutions

Getting to the same location: At a bare minimum, some kind of code to find out if there are other people in your area. That there is some population clustering strikes me as quite likely actually, even under random chance you get clusters.

Mutual aid at a distance: People could try mailing goods to each other, or figuring out who is on the edge of the range they are willing to drive to once a year and occasionally meeting up to exchange gifts like canned goods. I've been thinking the usual method of trying to rely on local groups just isn't very effective - what if your local group doesn't exist or isn't accepting people? That actually happened in my case when I went to look at a local mutual aid group.

The oncoming climate disaster: I do not have a green thumb, but I would love a project to green things. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't mind having their walls turned into mini-gardens but don't have the skills (or resources) to really maintain it or start it. Efficient use of space could mitigate the fact land is expensive. If global warming really starts baking plant life too, it may also be a good idea to start practicing in-door basement gardening (perhaps try to make much deeper basements for natural cooling?) sooner en-mass rather than later (which could lead to mass starvation if put off).

Pure Online Actions: There are some forms of work that lend themselves really well to being online. Coding, writing, news, encouraging people to vote, sending money to workers on strike.

and finally...

Cutting the pigs off directly: I firmly believe the most effective way to combat unethical companies is simply to start and support worker owned companies where every employee gets a vote on their wages, and 'starve' the big companies. I found myself looking at the massive amounts of money raised and wasted in political campaigns by small donations and found myself thinking - damn, with a million dollars, you could start a really small company with that. The second most effective way is probably striking, which, yes, you need people on the ground for that.

We could use an ethical version of Amazon, with a collective of shops that people can visit (the offline side of warehousing is a whole other bundle of issues), and an ethical Paypal. I know that credit unions exist, but I don't know of any credit union that has a Paypal-like API and easy convenience of simply clicking to pay for things. Uber and other apps. There is a huge amount of labor that we could 'take back' simply by providing another venue for people to practice it. Unfortunately, I don't think the fediverse way of doing things is quite appropriate when it comes to systems dealing with money. It's one thing to duplicate posts or ads for content for sale, but you don't want to duplicate credit card information. Open source it maybe and use 'semi centralization'; the Paypal-esque site can handle logins and money, and the Amazon-esque sites can perhaps do some form of federation and handle actual showing of items.

1

Not really a question for just biologists but I can't imagine too many nonbiologists knowing enough microbes to answer it haha.

1
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Stardust@kbin.social to c/cc_art@lemmy.world

One useful resource is the website opengameart. You can also do a search on duckduckgo for images and there will be an option to look for just public domain works / creative commons, although note this doesn't work properly 100% of the time. Clipart sites are often a good place to find creative commons art.

4

No matter what, Gary couldn't sleep. This wasn't because it was far, far too bright outside, and baking hot under the glare of the desert sun. Oh no. It was because they had been invaded...
By children's television characters.
He peered out the window cautiously. The coast seemed clear. Maybe he could wiggle out and do a quick run to the gas station.
Just then, a thump from the front hall caught his attention. He moved to check the door, nervously clutching a baseball bat as he inched forward, but a jiggle of the knob confirmed it was still locked. Thank God.
"I LOVE YOU."
Gary whirled as something fuzzy and cute launched itself at its back and screamed as it hugged him.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
He managed to wrestle it off and throw it to the ground. A puppet. He hated puppets. Actually, Gary hated most things. His one joy in life was causing misery and pain to others. This invasion? Had ruined all of that.
"Die, damn you, die!" he howled as he whacked it with a bat, but it just squeaked and giggled.
Suddenly, nothing in the world would die any more. There was no, ahem, bedroom fun time results either. It was exactly as if some creator on high had decided to put on some PG filter setting, perhaps because the creator's grandma was visiting and didn't like gore. Or fun.
"Become one of us!" it squeaked.
"Yes, one of us!" Another skittled out from the darkness. "We're all friends here."
"one of us, one of us," chanted more and more fuzzballs and cartoons, emerging from the darkness to swarm the grumpy misanthrope and drag him kicking into the sunshine. They dunked him into a rainbow pool, and he weakly crawled out and vomited.
"How do you feel now?" They said. "Friends?"
"I feel... great! Friends!" His eyes dilated wide and he began to grow fuzz across his entire body.
"Yay! One of us, one of us! Friends foreeeever!" they all shouted.
Sleep? Gary no longer needed sleep. Gary only needed... friends!

Any similarity to real life is coincidence. If we are ever invaded by cartoon characters, please do not blame the author.

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Stardust

joined 1 year ago