amberage

amberage, 1 year ago to random

Screw "this meeting could have been an email".

What about "this YouTube video could have been a blog post"?

noybeu, 1 month ago to random

🚨 noyb has filed a complaint against the ChatGPT creator OpenAI

OpenAI openly admits that it is unable to correct false information about people on ChatGPT. The company cannot even say where the data comes from.

Read all about it here 👇

https://noyb.eu/en/chatgpt-provides-false-information-about-people-and-openai-cant-correct-it

amberage, 7 months ago to StarTrek

Say what you will, but what is really the most optimistic thing about TNG, more so than the poverty-less and money-less utopia, is when somebody goes to the captain and says "this weird, unbelievable thing happened to me" and they believe them.

Reg says he sees a creature in the transporter beam and rather than saying "Reg, you well-known anxiety haver, you're imagining things!", they take the transporter apart, twice, to find out.

Beverly says she hears voices at night and has an overwhelming sense of deja-vu, and the captain doesn't say, "my, what an overactive imagination you have! Sleep more and do yoga!", he instructs the crew to sweep the entire ship with sensors, from top to bottom and starboard to port, until they've figured it out.

THAT is a world I'd like to live in.

#StarTrek #TNG

foone, 3 months ago to random

It's kinda depressing how tumblr is imploding now and I'm seeing half my follow list go "man, after seeing both twitter and tumblr do this, it's really showing how it's a bad idea for a social media network to be run by a company who can make arbitrary changes without user consent.

anyway, here's my bsky: ..."

amberage, 1 month ago to random

amberage, 5 months ago to random

Covid: It's That Bad

This is one of the most comprehensive write-ups I've seen and probably what I will be linking to from now on.

So, we have a virus that's incredibly contagious. It kills some people immediately. For everyone else, it damages your brain. It damages your heart and blood vessels. It damages your immune system, making you vulnerable to other diseases. It shortens your telomeres. It ages you.

[…]

It's so bad the average person can't wrap their heads around it. They would rather comfort themselves with platitudes. They would rather gaslight their own family. They would rather fit in.

#COVID #LongCOVID #CovidIsNotOver

amberage, 7 months ago to StarTrek

#StarTrek #TNG

amberage, 9 months ago to mecfs

This is encouraging: A protein that disrupts cells’ energy centers may be a culprit in chronic fatigue syndrome

American scientists have identified a protein that seems to play a part in chronic fatigue by screwing with the mitochondria ("the powerhouse of the cell", if you'll remember highschool biology).

At least on a petri dish level, they managed to de-fatigue human cells.

This might be an important step for #MECFS and #LongCOVID patients.

18+ amberage, 4 months ago to random

Impressive demonstration on why using country-specific TLDs for wordplays is not only often bordering on coloniser bs (generally speaking, I don't know queer.af's situation), but also plain impractical and just a bad idea in general.

luckytran, 5 months ago to random

NYS DoH just sent a reminder that healthcare workers are required to wear a mask if they haven't gotten their flu shot.

It makes zero sense they are ignoring COVID and not requiring masks for everyone. COVID levels are high, and you can still spread it if you are vaccinated.

amberage, 5 months ago to random

amberage, 10 months ago to random

Why do they call it cologne for men and perfume for women?

Why not düsseldorf for women?

amberage, 4 months ago to random

I love how governments and corporations pretend COVID is over, there are no mask mandates, no hygiene measures at workplaces anymore – but delivery services and other companies still have "due to COVID-19, deliveries may be delayed" messages up.

Schrödinger's COVID: it's over and not over, depending on which one serves corporate interests better.

amberage, 1 year ago to random

First they came for Black and native people, but I didn't care, because that's how it's always been and anyway we've come so far, haven't we.

Then they came for the immigrants, but I didn't care, because those people cause a lot of problems and they're unclean and strange.

Then they came for the sex workers, but I didn't care, because it's their own fault to work that job and I mustn't be associated with that kind of people.

Then they came for the homeless, but I didn't care, because I like my cities clean and they could just get a job, really what's so hard about that.

Then they came for the pregnant, but I didn't care, because men like me can always get their girlfriends an abortion if needed.

Then they came for the trans people, but I didn't care, because frankly they're sort of weird and just a fad and we're just indulging them and their wacko doctors.

Then they came for the permanently disabled, but I didn't care, because I was in good health and they should just stay at home or eat healthier.

Then they came for the journalists, and I wrote an op-ed titled “first they came for the journalists”.

— liberal journalists

Edit: for the love of whatever, please stop sending follow requests. At this point I've got around 100 piled up and I will not get through them all, ever.

Edit (14/03/2023): Did away with the all-lowercase and capitalised properly.

amberage, 11 months ago to Futurology

Everyone should read this (and Eugen, Byron, and Stux should be tied to chairs and have it read to them 24/7): How to Kill a Decentralised Network, about how Google killed XMPP and why Facebook looking into ActivityPub compatibility is bad news for everyone.

#EEE #Meta #Facebook

amberage, 10 months ago to til

#TIL: Github-flavoured Markdown supports alt text for images.

Whereas the usual syntax for pictures on Github is ![image](/path/to/file), it accepts an alt text in quotation marks after the path: ![image](/path/to/file "this is the description").

!!

#Accessibility #ImageDescriptions #Markdown

amberage, 6 months ago to random

Imagine if Rockstar Games fixed GTA V's "getting stuck in a black loading screen forever" bug before thinking about GTA VI

amberage, 10 months ago to random

You hear a lot of "why is it always trans women accused of racism and driven out of communities" and that that's a transmisogynistic campaign.

And yes, there may very well be some transmisogyny involved, because trans women do tend to be held to a higher standard than others and expected to be perfect.

BUT.

Have you ever seen how many trans people use 4chan slang like "based"? How common wojaks are in our community? How deep a foothold the "-pilled" copypasta has?

How completely normal it is on trans subreddits to talk about "back in my 4chan phase"?

Is it that hard to believe that too many of us haven't overcome, or don't want to overcome, that edgelord trolling mindset?

I learned about the origin of "based" and wojaks last year and I've made an effort not to use them since. I know others who haven't.

Yes, holding trans women to a higher standard you don't hold others to is transmisogyny, and yes, we tend to be singled out by those around us for harsher judgements than others, but is that really what's going on here?

Because I'll tell you more: when you have a social circle that's 90% trans women, of course you get the impression that "they're only coming for trans women". How many cis men, how many liberals are you friends with that could complain to you about those evil scheming black people coming for their free speech?

If you hear 1 cis man and 9 trans women called out for racism, is it a witch hunt against trans women, or do you just know 10 cis men and 90 trans women and that's why it seems disproportional?

That's called selection bias.

And furthermore: do your black friends perhaps keep white cis people and liberals at arm's length? Is your community perhaps made primarily of trans people, white and of colour, and so all racism that gets called out in-community is from white trans people?

When you hear "the blacks hate all trans women", think for a second and ask yourself if you're being goaded into getting angry at black people, and who has an interest in decrying all anti-racism as transmisogyny and making you give up solidarity with your black comrades.

And how much 4chan culture you have absorbed, knowingly or unknowingly.

That's not to say "guilty until proven innocent", and that's not to say there is no transmisogyny (our society is full of it, and often in ways we don't see at first or that superficially don't even seem to be connected to trans women).

That's to say "take a deep breath and think before you let yourself be moral panic'd.

Holding trans women to higher standards than others and condemning them harsher than others happens all the time (just look at how cis lesbians' sexuality is talked about vs trans lesbians'!), but not every criticism of a trans woman is a witch hunt.

Be sensible, be reasonable, stand in solidary with both your trans sisters and your comrades of colour.

And stop using that goddamn 4chan slang and imagery.

amberage, 4 months ago to random German

Denkt dran bei den Demos heute keine Fotos zu posten, auf denen einzelne Gesichter (oder klar identifizierbare Outfits) abgebildet sind.

Das heißt:

• Nahaufnahmen vermeiden, Gesichter schwärzen falls unumgänglich
• Keine Bilder posten, auf denen ihr jemandes besonders cooles Demo-Outfit fotografiert habt
• Vorsicht beim Posten von Demoschildern – am Besten nachfragen, damit ihr nicht dazu beitragt, dass jemand aus mehreren Bildern der Person eine Identifikation zusammensetzt
• Bilder von großen Mengen am besten nicht in Originalgröße posten, sondern soweit runterskalieren, dass kein Reinzoomen auf einzelne Gesichter mehr möglich ist

Menschen die von Deportationen träumen, Journalisten inhaftieren wollen und Todeslisten anlegen haben keine Hemmungen, Demo-Fotos nach identifizierbaren Gegnern zu durchforsten!

Und noch ein paar Technik-Tips:

• NICHT verpixeln – schwärzen! Verpixelung kann heute technisch relativ gut umgangen werden.
• Benutzt nicht die eingebauten Mal-Tools eurer Photo-Apps, viele davon sind nicht komplett deckend / leicht transparent und können mit ein wenig Aufwand ausgeblendet werden.

Stay safe und übt euch in Datensparsamkeit!

#Demoetikette

amberage, 2 months ago to Fashion

#Histodon and #fashion fediverse, help me out here, please.

A while ago, I saw a comment somewhere (not necessarily fedi) that boiled down roughly to this:

"The British aristocracy made their (edit: male) servants recognisable as such by dressing them in formal clothes, but in mismatched combinations (i.e. tailcoat with a black bowtie, long tie with a wing collar)."

This was (roughly speaking and to the best of my knowledge) about the Victorian through Edwardian and early Modern periods, i.e. when formalwear as we know it (morning coat, tailcoat, etc.) already existed in roughly the form we know it.

I can't find that comment anymore, and I don't expect I ever will, but it would be fascinating to read more about this subject, very specific and niche as it is. I've tried googling around for it (i.e. "historical british servant dress codes"), but found very little.

If anyone has some reading material on that (preferably online or books buyable online, if not I'll have to see if my library can get foreign (english) literature), I would be super grateful for any links or the likes.

@histodons

amberage, 2 months ago to random

"my great dane is fine" sir your horse thinks she's a puppy

kfh, 3 months ago to random

If not friend why friend shaped?

(via https://www.tumblr.com/seananmcguire/743142438370181120)

#caturday

A large cat with tufted ears sleeping in a pile of snow on top of a car. Gets woken up and petted by a human

amberage, 9 months ago to webdev

Okay I've got a #HTML #accessibility question/problem here...

I'm building a site here and it's all default colours, meaning black text on white background. Links are the default blue (purple if clicked), and I've not prescribed any colours via CSS anywhere.

In the footer, I've got an anchor element (a link) with an abbreviation element nested inside it.

Now Firefox's automated accessibility checks throw an error here, and this is a weird one: it claims the text is blue on a purple background, and that it doesn't have enough contrast.

The way I see it, it somehow (how?) thinks there is an unclicked link on the background of a clicked link, which isn't what's happening at all... any help?

Pictured below is the piece in question. The CC link is what's being flagged. Reversing the order of the elements (nesting the anchor inside the abbreviation element) doesn't fix anything, but throws a different error (now it says blue on gray isn't enough, even though there is no gray anywhere).

#WebDesign

amberage, 7 months ago to StarTrek

"Star Trek is so progressive"

According to the script, Guinan was supposed to start telling Lal, 'When a man and a woman are in love…' and in the background, there would be men and women sitting at tables, holding hands. But Whoopi refused to say that. She said, 'This show is beyond that. It should be 'When two people are in love.'" It was also decided on set that the background of the scene show a same-sex couple holding hands, but "someone ran to a phone and made a call to the production office and that was nixed," continued Arnold. "[Producer] David Livingston came down and made sure that didn't happen."

Memory Alpha

#StarTrek