@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

floatybirb

@floatybirb@mastodon.social

he/him. here to quack at the void.

sewer socialist trash mammal.
the world's leading advocate of building an #OrbitalMooseSanctuary
irascible foe of the Lombards

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

Launching my thread for ! Arachnophobes, beware! Shatnerphobes also beware!

Tragically my internet died while I started watching this movie, so I shall start by posting a backlog of posts, hash tag mwahahahaha

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

This movie starts with some country music, then zooms in on some cow farmers. The boy cow farmer has overalls but no shirt. The girl cow farmer is dressed like Rosie the riveter, but with a pink bonnet. They do a farm banter.

Then the camera zooms in on a very suspicious looking cow. As in, the cow is suspicious of its surroundings. As it should be, because scary music plays!

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Which major change would a time traveler from 1974 notice most about cities today?

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@evan Other; I think the main things they'd pick up on would be that the cars are bigger and rounder and that people are dressed differently.

nocontextb5, to Babylon5
@nocontextb5@mastodon.social avatar

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@nocontextb5 its the budget, garibaldi; they can only afford warehouses for the sets.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

lol get fucked

i didn't expect to see the Hague Invasion Act be tested in my lifetime

https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/internationaal/10545882/vs-dreigt-met-maatregelen-tegen-strafhof-den-haag

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@whitequark this sounds good I don't see what he's so upset about.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

Scrolling @historyofpunkrock makes me think the 21st century needs to invent some more subcultures.

The 70s and 80s kids invented new aesthetics and artistic traditions; it seems like we've been slacking a bit instead of inventing the next punk. Maybe neoliberalism ground us down too much.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

I beseech the vogons to give the people more bike lanes

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

is there a standard way to get FM radio station playlists? I would figure that there would be something because of having to manage royalties, but as far as i can find each station has their own way of doing playlists and only some of them are APIs that support longer histories

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@jonny Nickelback

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@jonny I was guessing that counts as "classic" post-panini.

I listened to the classic rock stations as a smaller floatybirb, but back then I didn't know the bands too well, and it was mostly fairly generic rock noises.

misc, to random
@misc@mastodon.social avatar

I had to re-add a dormant Twitter account to my app to rt something as a favor to a friend, and suddenly I'm getting push notifications of Elon tweets and other right wing garbage.

Is this new, or has it been ongoing and I'd just disabled it?

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@misc I have not observed this personally, but it matches other stories I have read about twitter on this site.

waldoj, to random
@waldoj@mastodon.social avatar

Oklahoma’s governor refuses to let kids in his state access the federal government’s new summer EBT program, to ensure that kids can have meals when school is out. In response, five tribal nations have teamed up to provide the benefits to any eligible kids who happen to live on tribal land (which is a lot of Oklahoma). https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/us/politics/school-meals-summer-ebt.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jE0.NZAi.mehkrnKm8xuN&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ugrp=u&sgrp=c-cb

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@waldoj It is the United States in the year 2054. For unclear reasons, all social services are run by Indian tribes.

This seems a little odd administratively, but most observers agree that it could be a lot worse.

rysiek, (edited ) to random
@rysiek@mstdn.social avatar

Here's a half-formed thought I need to mull a bit on:

Somehow, algorithmic (and especially "AI-driven") decision making tends to only be proposed in contexts where it can only — or mostly — affect those with the least power in the system.

Migrants and asylum seekers.
Prisoners.
Families using any form of state support (child benefits, foodstamps, etc).
Palestinians in Gaza.

It somehow never gets proposed for use-cases where it might affect the wealthy and powerful.

One wonders why. 🤔

🧵/1

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@rysiek The place where power dynamic gets actualized might be a corporate board room where a bunch of possible uses for AI decision making are discussed, and any use case that might result in the company getting sued too much just gets shot down.

Poor people can't afford lots of lawyers, so they end up with more computer tools governing them.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

🎶 I will not post on twitter, for it's a nazi bar; I will not drive a tesla, for it's a nazi car 🎵

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

protip: if you're about to be eaten by a werewolf, eat as much chocolate as quickly as you can, so if the werewolf eats you, it will die.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

Forest Gump, but the main character is from the Cucuteni-Trypillia archaeological culture of southeast Europe, and the movie is set in the period of 3680-3650 BCE. It is very nostalgic and full of historical references, but no one watching the movie today has any idea what is going on.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@evan probably in the background and on some of the props, but of course no modern audience can read them.

This film is really optimized for 3690s (BCE) kids as far as comprehension goes.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

did everyone know that is a hashtag? You can follow it to look at pictures of meese in your mastodon!

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

This video concept feels ... like a call-out on my watch preferences.

And yes I would totally click on this.

(Drawing by parakavka on tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/parakavka/743974006823190528/my-partner-has-about-3-genres-of-youtube-video )

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird my composite video is probably "lofi girl fights capitalism with obsolete military technology"

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

warning: grapes of wrath may transform into raisins of simmering resentment

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Her long legs, her dark eyes, her golden hair.

The face of the same ant as seen from the front.
The faster of the ant has golden hairs. So much beauty in an unexpected place.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird ants up close are always way more spindly than I imagine from far away, with lots of very narrow vital connecting bits.

floatybirb, to random
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

Currently reading Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend, about the history of the Mexica (the artists formerly (and later) known as the Aztecs) and the Spanish colonization of Mexico, favoring post-colonization native sources (i.e. - Nahua speakers writing histories in the Latin alphabet).

Unsurprisingly, its kind of a bummer. Reading about the colonization of the Americas is a good way to convince yourself that everyone is doomed and a better world is impossible.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

When facing the Conquistadores, the calculus for most of the native governments seems to be "Well, these guys are really powerful; we probably could kill them with sheer numbers if we really wanted to, but we'd take so many loses fighting them that doing so would leave us weaker to all our other enemies." And so they end up trying to placate the Conquistadores.

The Tlaxcaltecs go a step further, seeing the Spanish as a potential means to topple their hated Mexica rivals.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

In any battle between mesoamericans and conquistadores, the former take horridly disproportionate casualties due to the later having metal armor, horses and cannon; the effects of this gap in technology is actually more extreme than I expected. Still, its very clear that Tenochtitlan would not have fallen without native assistance, as the Tlaxcaltecs provided almost all of the logistic support and probably did most of the fighting.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

It's also amazing how little either of these peoples know about each other... the Conquistadors literally just land in a place they've never heard of and in the next year they start overturning inter-city politics, spreading a smallpox and causing an apocalypse.

In the beginning, there is only one translator (the famous Malintzin, a slave girl given to the Conquistadors as tribute by the first coastal city they attacked) who is the conduit for all negotiations between Cortes and all the Nahuas.

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

Anyway, remembering how weird the 2020s have been, the 1520s were a whole lot worse if you were living in Mexico.

Imagine aliens invading, a third of everyone dying from space plague and also world war III breaking out as half of all countries alien with the alien invaders and that's the general vibe in 1520s Mesoamerica.

spaceflight, to random
@spaceflight@spacey.space avatar

#DreamChaser time-lapse consisting of over 1 million still images https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TesrNdfbMJ8&t=3s

#SierraSpace

floatybirb,
@floatybirb@mastodon.social avatar

@nyrath @spaceflight I have trouble imagining any way the Dream Catcher (which I thought was planned as a crew return vehicle) could be useful logistically, unless you're shipping a tiny number of people or a small volume of very valuable goods between two already-existing spaceports.

My thought is maybe the military wants to use Dream Catcher for something else and is signing a cargo contract as cover.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • everett
  • InstantRegret
  • osvaldo12
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • Youngstown
  • mdbf
  • slotface
  • ngwrru68w68
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • provamag3
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cisconetworking
  • cubers
  • Leos
  • modclub
  • tacticalgear
  • tester
  • anitta
  • megavids
  • normalnudes
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •