I think people know, they just don’t give a shit because they think they’re entitled to have art and artists are arseholes for not giving them exactly what they want

When you put something out there, you allow for the possibility that people will see your work and incorporate it into their mental catalog of art and artistic process

…except when a person is doing it, they’re doing their own thing to it. They take an idea or two and filter it through their own lens and stylise it

Think about it like this - when you do data scraping, you’re still interpreting the results. You’re looking at the data and going ‘ok from this I can draw X and Y conclusions based on this and that’. AI art is like if we removed you from the process - we just shoved all the data into a black box and it goes ding “X is Y”. If you asked it why that’s so, it wouldn’t be able to tell you. You can’t see how it works so you have no idea if it’s reasoning makes scientific sense. It would not be admissible in a paper.

If you pirate shit then you have no ground to stand on for complaining about AI training.

…don’t most people kinda agree you don’t pirate from small artists where piracy is actually hurting them? There’s like, honour along thieves when it comes to piracy, and this is stepping all over the little guy who’s actually hurt by this just to get your grubby little hands on something you think you’re entitled to

I mean if you tend to plug things in at the same computer a lot it’s pretty easy to always plug things in right the first time, even when not looking because you just kinda know what way it’s meant to be. And laptops usually have all theirs pointing the same way so you know one you know them all. If something has text on it, it’s usually oriented in such a way that when plugged in you can read it. Or they have a little face and you know which way the face is meant to be facing

I have a similar “power” and while I’m not flawless, it’s only really new or unfamiliar devices/computers that trip me up. Or plugs that don’t actually have any identifying features and/or unusual ones

A more meta one - the Wikipedia list of Lamest edit wars is very entertaining. Entries include: is Hummus Israeli or an illegally occupied Palestinian dip, asking snakes what they think of the Israeli-Palenstine conflict, is 3 always an odd number?, Michael Palin vs Sarah Palin, and should we put a picture of a human bumhole in the article for anus and if so which one?

Wordpress even has activitypub integration now! Hooray! Here’s hoping automattic do good on their word and bring it to their other projects like Tumblr

Also as much as I like gimp, it is unfortunately not that widely used due to super specialised and hard to use compared to the industry standard juggernaut that is adobe’s creative suite. You’re probably going to get laughed at in any professional industry if you suggest seriously using it.

A great Australian one that doesn’t involve spiders or cunts is “tell ‘im he’s dreamin’”, usually said in a real broad accent (you can change the pronouns around what more matters is the way you say it). Usually used whenever someone’s asking too much money for something but can also be used for when someone’s asking for too much in general and basically means “are you fucking kidding me that’s way too expensive”. It’s from a great movie called The Castle. It also gave us the saying “[this is going] straight to the pool room” meaning “shit this is really nice thanks” (because the pool room is where you put your trophies and whatnot) but I think that’s a little less common.

On the other side of the globe, Norway uses “Texas” to mean “crazy weird shit”. There’s also “kamelåså” which generally means “unintelligible (like a Danish person)” which is from this great comedy sketch about Denmark that’s so good NRK decided they had to translate it into English just so people could make fun of Danish internationally (The untranslated bits are just danish sounding gibberish)

You can put mad Infront of all the cunts that don’t have adjectives already to make them even more extreme.

“This mad cunt” for when your mate’s done something really out there while “mad dog cunt” is real fucking bad for example

Congratulations you’re now a snake

I feel like whoever translated Lem’s sillier works definitely deserves a massive hand because oh my god there is so much wordplay like this and it all carries over to english really well. Like all the drug names and made up words and Tarantoga’s entire three page long ramble about ‘futuology’/predictive etymology which I guess had to be entirely rewritten in order to work in English in The Futurlogical Congress

I don’t think we’ve had a single good adaption of an Isaac Asimov story - Foundation the show is very clearly not Foundation the series and I Robot is…not even worth acknowledging and infuriates me because like, if they wanted to do a murder mystery about Asimov’s robots and call into question his “laws”, Caves of Steel is right there and it’s great. I’d love a good adaption of Caves of Steel but nooo lets all adapt the nigh impossible to adapt because it’s dense as all fuck Foundation instead because that’s the story everyone knows.

Also because you’ve mentioned kids media - How to Train your Dragon. The original series was this fun and interesting world where dragons have existed along humanity since the beginning and were our friends and work animals and the main character was a legitimately weak kid who was more interested in being a biologist and was legitimately pretty good at it, being able to actually talk to them and he had friends and Toothless was this highly entertaining small sassy green thing who was like, the world’s equivalent of a house sparrow. And then DreamWorks took the title and base concept of “dragons and vikings” and threw everything else out for a generic movie with a generic protangonist in a generic fantasy setting. The dragons are now big and scary but the main character goes out to prove that they’re not big and scary and Toothless is now just a giant dumb cat who’s the world’s equivalent of an invisible fire breathing polar bear but it’s ok because Hiccup is special and they replaced the fun gremlin Kamikazi with the generic female love interest character who’s trait is being better than the boys. But because everyone adores it we’re never going to get an actual adaption that actually follows the books are we?

Also Solaris deserves a good adaption that isn’t actively hostile to anyone who isn’t interested in avant garde Soviet cinema. Stanislav Lem’s one of my favourite authors and because of that fucking film it’s legitimately hard to recomend Solaris the book to people because they’re like “oh I tried watching it and it was really boring and confusing and overly arthouse?”

Also also I haven’t actually seen them but like, is there any adaption of Wuthering Heights that’s actually like, accurate? Because I’ve read the book and every time I talk to someone who’s only seen the movie or TV adaptions it feels like they’re talking about a completely different story that’s just like, “Austen but kinda deranged” and not the batshit anti-Austen sturm und drang trainwreck that is the actual story (and also they apparently kinda ignore the last third of the book with Cathy 2 and Linton and Hareton?)

Kubrick…good adaptions

You mean Stanley “I didn’t even read the entirety of A Clockwork Orange” Kubrick? Mister “Actually let’s age up the girl in Lolita and spend time focusing on how sexy she is”? That Kubrick? Dude completely ignores the point of both books and does the one thing the authors very specifically do not want you to do

Absolutely not, because it replaced the aloo tikki/potato option

Still mad about that. Fucking love veggie burgers but can’t stand fake meat nonsense.

So’s Norway - quite a few places on the west coast (the most inhabited non-Oslo part of the country) rely on the fact that the gulf stream keeps them unusually warm for their latitude

I’m already seeing things that would normally grow fine out in the garden suffer from abnormally late and early frosts and mild summers. Rip my tomatos and onions. Everyone’s complaining about 20+ degree springs in the mainland while I’m screaming that it’s still snowing in late May.

This wasn’t malicious per se, but I had an English teacher/school counsellor who suspected I had some sort of learning disability and treated me like an idiot because of it, but like in that sort of “poor you let me help you” way that’s like really condescending that ended up really hurting my self confidence.

If I struggled with something for any reason, I was given something easier. If something I did conflicted with what she thought was correct, she would sit down and “help me correct it” because I think she seemed to think it was I guess an autism thing or something, which meant she spent a lot of time (usually taking me out of lunch break) trying to “correct” whatever she thought I was doing wrong. Which was exasperated by the fact I was an expat from the Commonwealth and she was an American so half the time they were just, cultural things. My dialect? Incorrect stop being non-rhotic and dropping your Ts. Handwriting? Oh dear this isn’t D’nealian you’re going to have to relearn this. Needed something repeated because I didn’t hear it? Let’s sit down and go through each step one by one in simple English so you can understand it. Social issues were the worst because she’d try to explain how to be friends with someone like I was five and try and push me into other people’s friend groups when I did not want to do that.

I know she wasn’t being malicious and like, she was right - I did have a neurological disorder, and she was the only person who noticed before it actually started affecting me negatively. But oh my god she was so condescending and made me feel like I was so stupid and absolutely fucked my handwriting. Also people noticed the attention she gave me and made fun of being for being “retarded” which was fun.

A cheap fountain pen like a Lamy safari. Maybe some brightly coloured ink too.

Growing up I loved pens and my dad had some vintage Watermans he used all the time which were unquestionably Cool Pens but also really “fancy” so I wasn’t allowed to touch them, and we just didn’t know that way cheaper and less fiddly fountain pens existed because all of his came from the op shop with ink from borders and not an actual pen store. 8 year old me would’ve been estatic that not only do easier to use cheaper options exist, they’re bright yellow and also you can put any colour in them, not just boring black.

…I feel like everyone answering “Powerball numbers” or “apple stocks” is completely missing the spirit of the question

I know plastic is scary but guys, you don’t need to replace your entire plastic container selection - you could just, decant your food into a different container before microwaving it? The microwave is what’s doing this, not the fridge.

I’d recommend getting a small borosilicate/Pyrex dish like This. I’ve been using two of them my entire life (did none of you get taught that microwaving plastic with food make it go funny as a kid?) And they last a good while. Provided you don’t drop them. I think IKEA sells them and I’ve seen them around in my local kitchen store in non-pyrex brands. Also they’re oven and dishwasher safe too!

Also I don’t reccomend hunting for vintage Pyrex here - old pyrex chips super easily and constant use and slamming the lid on will chip the edges to hell and back. The European formula isn’t actually the same as the old one so it’s fine but unless you like glass chips in your cupboard and super sharp edges, don’t go for it.

Pyrex/borosilicate dishes work pretty well here. Both Pyrex and IKEA do little single serving casserole dishes with a lid that work fantastic. Been using them for decades now

Alternatively you could upend a plate on-top of your bowl

Then don’t - get a small glass/Pyrex casserole dish with a glass lid and decant your leftovers into that every time you go to heat something up. I think IKEA sell some nice sized ones.

If you don’t drop it they last for decades and that’s what I’ve been doing. I do not reccomend looking for vintage stuff though - the reason why they stopped using the original original glass formula is because it chips easily and yeah, something that gets used on a very regular basis with its lid constantly going on and off is going to start chipping something awful over time

Take up knitting and knit yourself some washcloths and dusting cloths! Pretty common here in Scandinavia (you can actually just get cotton machine knit ones in the supermarket but I’m not sure those are a thing elsewhere) and they’re pretty much baby’s first knitting project because it’s just, a square

Where I live sous vide are pretty common in the readymade dinner section - wonder if they’re better for you than microwaving and if we should maybe be doing that instead