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Well yeah, of course the problem here would be child support and not divorce is functionally impossible in Missouri.
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That was very nearly my exact same thought. Maybe not for curious children with carrot-sized fingers, but for adults, how convenient! Business competitor's body won't quite fit in your fancy frunk? Just while away on your phone for about 10 minutes, let the cat do its magic, and off go the legs! Travel-sized!
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That's what got me, too. The fucking gall. They didn't devolve somehow into proto-humans, they have brain damage and he himself knows they have brain damage.
For all the specific type of damage is explained in the article, I was going to guess that it could be a simple balancing issue and a basic google search proved that correct: the siblings who walk like this all have a congenital defect that causes mental removedation and difficulty balancing, in addition to other things like muscle weakness and impacted speech and coordination, the latter two of which are normally present but they don't happen to suffer from. Hence why they won't stand upright, but they will do embroidery.
Motherfucker just referred to a handful of mentally disabled people as the missing link between human and ape. Out loud.
I only hope he sees academic humiliation for this.
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I mean, I know I'm raining on an already pretty despairing post, here, in times that very well do lend themselves to despair, but that sentiment has been around as long as I've been alive and I'd bet good money decades longer. It's probably one of those sentiments that's as old as people.
But no one (or at least, comparatively very few) was rewarded for hating Elvis. He hasn't been a thing in a long time. Same with any other risque entertainer that was also satan, they fall by the wayside after everyone gets bored. People are rewarded very well when they bend over for billionaires. As long as sociopathy is rewarded, there will always be rampant sociopathy.
I'm not saying it's so ingrained that there's no point in fighting it -- forcibly changing the culture is of the utmost importance, especially now. But that sentiment, the battle plan can't just be "wait around and it will work itself out." It's not like billionaires either of the actual or the temporarily embarrassed sort don't have kids. I'm starting to see that's the fatal flaw the more liberal-minded seem to have. It's like we believe so hard that everyone is inherently good and that things will work out in the end that we never bother to make a move. It's the death of us.
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Uh....then you have kids? If you want them? I do not think I understand the question.
Nepenthe
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Ah yes, the only two functions, reproduction and opening jars /s
Recently, scientists successfully induced the stem cell of a male mouse to transform into an egg instead of sperm.
The resultant litter was in all respects normal and, while we are talking about baby steps (ha) with mice instead of humans, I'm sure that would be a when, not an if.
The biggest immediate concern would probably be depression and osteoporosis. Pretty sure the depression wouldn't be very new, sadly, for anyone still paying attention to anything around them at all, but it doesn't need to be added to the pile for a demographic that already doesn't tend to reach out.
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Fanning slowly -- "I am married."
Fanning quickly -- "I am engaged."
Using as a fan -- "Introduce me to your company."
.....?
I have to wonder who came up with this. One would imagine it was just some idea someone had and they published a whole etiquette book about it, and it slowly but forcefully caught on from there, because otherwise I can't imagine this just being a thing that evolves spontaneously in a way everyone equally understands. Imagine sitting all the way across the room at a ball or something and witnessing someone break up with their boytoy through body language. With perfect clarity for all to see. You might as well just say it out loud.
Nepenthe
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From the US: I'm over 30 and this is the first time I've heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.
It's always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I've also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I'm starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts....?
But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.
Nepenthe
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Remember, if the thick cloud emitted by the egg only drifts upwards, it's probably no good.
No, this graphic really is solid advice for people to know, but damn if it could have been designed with a little more forethought. Imagine, for instance, if the reader is yellow/blue colorblind. They could make a guess at what's happening, but they may not quite be sure. Arrows are doing 99% of the lifting, here.
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I would be very concerned if one did not at least break even, but we can always bulldoze the bulldozing company at the end.
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God, the taste their AI is about to garner for coconuts.
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Christ, do you understand how big this could be if anyone would let it? (they won't)
Even a ton of "more environmentally friendly" textiles are as bad if not somehow worse than their already destructive counterparts. I ran the numbers once in an argument and a recyclable shopping bag requires a little over 70 uses just to break even with the comparable pollution it took to make it, but most people who even use them throw them out after less than 20.
God, I wish it said anything about how resilient it is as clothing in comparison to regular leather. I've known about the making of lab-grown ghost hearts and stuff through a similar method for a while now, but this never even occurred to me. I know next to nothing about bacteria, clearly.
Sadly, there's still too much money in doing anything else, I'd bet. So many companies put too much effort into PR, greenwashing and general slavery to want to move over, and this would affect more industries than one.
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I agree with all your other statements, but offer you this one counterpoint: you're getting the interesting ones.
Some program out there calculated once that *I* have a low to moderate chance of being female, but very little of anything else I look up could be considered advertiser friendly. Their only option remaining was to make all my targeted ads dumbass sweatshop clothes and feminine hygiene products forever.
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Things like, say, an increased need for vitamin D supplements in colder climates, because you need sunlight to manufacture vitamin D to make serotonin and the increased melanin blocks what little sun is available way up north? Sure. That one is a difference off the top of my head that people really just don't think about.
Kidney function is provably not one of them and never was, so you're gonna have to fuck off with that. I usually make a conscious, concerted effort to be a better person than I was on reddit, but you already admitted in another comment that you don't know shit about medicine and you seem bothered in the opposite direction regardless.
So with the possibility of this topic being your emotional support knowledge base out of the picture, the only horse you logically seem to have in this is that seeing ethnic minorities demand that we stop allowing them to die by reason of nothing annoys you to have to listen to.
If that's not the case, I might be a bit quieter and rephrase everything you said forever, because it does not look like you want it to look. If it IS the case, get the fuck off my platform.
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On the one hand, I feel really proud that I got under your skin so much that mine is the only contribution you've ever replied to in the 7 months that whole account has even existed. Someone just clearly isn't having a good day if that's the one thing that set off a professional lurker.
But also, like....I thought about this all through my quesadilla and it's just really sad? Is this like Incel Logic: Hobby Edition, where you're either born perfect and flawless or you're a permanent shit failure and therefore whichever way the coin falls, you never have to work at anything? Like Big Education is a trillion dollar industry now, and really society is divided up Airbender style and you just didn't get the CalArts gene?
There's only one kind of person I can see falling for this weak-ass angle, and it's the kind of person who's never taken up any recreation for more than 1-2 days in their whole life because they don't start out amazing at it and you can't fail at anything if you never do shit. And honestly, I'm kinda bummed out that you have to live like that. You know you can just look up tutorials for anything these days.
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That would pretty clearly be the "I picked up a pencil 15 years ago and never put it down." And it hurts me inside, that anyone would see that and jump to "obviously filtered to hell." It is exactly this interaction:
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A lot of people you read about who grew to be leaders in their field by some ridiculous age like 25, spoke fluently in 5 different languages, etc. etc. did so because they had three things: dedicated one-on-one tutors, an appreciable collection of slaves and/or other general servants to free up their personal time, and enough family wealth to pay for both from the time they could walk.
Mozart was composing as a toddler, but he also came from a wealthy family of musicians that taught him basically nothing else. Ever. That was the one thing. He hyper-specialized in music and socially he was the guy that got bored and did cartwheels and meowed in public. If Mozart was in your position, with the kind of loving care and finances most students have today, he would have been the kid in class who beatboxes over the teacher.
I'm actually still coming to terms with this myself. with mixed success. I've always loved art, but I've never been where I want to be. I've been making strides again, but the further I take it, the more it becomes apparent that 90% of the problems I've ever had with it were not me, they were because no one ever bothered to teach me. And I'm pissed about the decades I lost simply because child me was never shown concepts that would have changed everything.
Do not judge your own accomplishments on the same scale as someone who had ample time to devote to their studies because their family had house slaves doing everything you have to do by yourself.
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Guess what happened the two whole times I deliberately ignored the "paranoia."
Go on. Guess.
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It probably takes me that long just to wash and rinse my hair.
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Spring of 2015. Redesigned my sims' mansion to be so gorgeous and intricate that by the time I was done perfecting it, the sheer size of the lot and the amount of moving parts in it made the entire file unplayable.
I swore I would keep the thing around until I had a better computer, because I loved it so much and I was doing a legacy family I'd gotten really attached to. Now, 9 years later, I have a better computer. The graphics are too dated to be fun.
www.vice.com
[Original article](https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3jbz/scientific-journal-frontiers-publishes-ai-generated-rat-with-gigantic-penis-in-worrying-incident) A peer-reviewed scientific journal that this week published a study containing nonsensical AI-generated images including a gigantic rat penis has retracted the article and apologized. The paper was authored by three scientists in China, edited by a researcher in India, reviewed by two people from the U.S. and India, and published in the open access journal Frontiers in Cell Development and Biology on Monday. Despite undergoing multiple checks, the paper was published with AI-generated figures that went viral on social media because of their absurdity. One figure featured a rat with a massive dissected dick and balls and garbled labels such as “iollotte sserotgomar cell” and “testtomcels.” The authors said they used the generative AI tool Midjourney to create the images. On Thursday afternoon, Frontiers added a notice saying that the paper had been corrected and a new version would be published soon. The journal later updated the notice to say that it was retracting the study entirely because “the article does not meet [Frontiers’] standards of editorial and scientific rigor.” Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Frontiers directed Motherboard to a statement posted to the journal’s web page on Thursday apologizing to the scientific community and explaining that, in fact, a reviewer of the paper had raised concerns about the AI-generated images that were ignored. “Our investigation revealed that one of the reviewers raised valid concerns about the figures and requested author revisions,” Frontiers’ statement reads. “The authors failed to respond to these requests. We are investigating how our processes failed to act on the lack of author compliance with the reviewers' requirements. We sincerely apologize to the scientific community for this mistake and thank our readers who quickly brought this to our attention.” The paper had two reviewers, one in India and one based in the U.S. Motherboard contacted the U.S.-based reviewer who said that they evaluated the study based solely on its scientific merits and that it was up to Frontiers whether or not to publish the AI-generated images since the authors disclosed that they used Midjourney. Frontiers’ policies allow the use of generative AI as long as it is disclosed but, crucially, the images must also be accurate. The embarrassing incident is an example of how the issues surrounding generative AI more broadly have seeped into academia, in ways that are sometimes concerning to scientists. Science integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik wrote on her personal blog that it was “a sad example of how scientific journals, editors, and peer reviewers can be naive—or possibly even in the loop—in terms of accepting and publishing AI-generated crap.”
Source: [buttersafe.com](https://www.buttersafe.com/2010/11/25/the-door/)
www.siliconera.com
> > > Larian Studios's policy and guidelines restrict the selling of fan content or goods for any of its games, including Baldur's Gate 3… > > > > …The five basic rules for making fan content of Baldur’s Gate 3 and other Larian Studios games are: > > > > 1. Keep it free. > 2. Keep it clear it’s fan content. > 3. Keep it honest. > 4. Keep it clean > 5. Keep it legit. > > > > The fourth rule of “Keep it clean” simply means that Larian Studios reserves the right to stop your use of its IP if it deems your content “inappropriate, offensive, damaging, or disparaging.” It isn’t forbidding you from making R-18 content. > > > > “Keep it honest” and “Keep it clear it’s fan content” are very similar. The main rule in question is the first one, in which you cannot sell “fan content to any third parties for any type of compensation.” > > > > If you really want to make Baldur’s Gate 3 fan content, you can do so. You simply cannot do it for profit. This would include putting something behind a paywall, or selling items at a convention. For reference, Larian Studios defines “fan content” as “fanart, videos, stories, screenshots, cosplays, mods, or anything else.” Uploading or giving things away for free are both totally alright. > > I'm guessing this may be more a WotC thing than a Larian thing. Still annoyed to hear it, since things like cosplay can be expensive and I imagine they're things you put your heart into the same as art. I've seen some damn incredible stuff at conventions before, and I'd hate to be deprived of them rather than force the artist to give their work away for free. This also makes commissioned work feel weirdly shaky, depending on what they're calling a third party? Wonder if this will turn into [a panini situation ](https://imgur.com/a/awmQCkS). Free amigurumi Karlach with every purchase of a $40 pencil.
For any here who are both multilingual and also experience [synesthesia/ideasthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideasthesia#:~:text=Ideasthesia%20(alternative%20spelling%20ideaesthesia)%20is,'%20or%20'sensing%20ideas') -- concepts such as numbers, days of the week, educational subjects, music, etc. being felt or experienced to have a specific color, taste, smell or whatnot -- *is the color, etc. of that thing different depending on which language you're thinking in?* It has just occurred to me that while I've always pictured Thursday to be a kind of prussian blue, the turkish word for thursday (Perşembe) is bright carnation pink. Sunday is yellow (for obvious reasons), but *Pazar* is white. Same with anything else. Phys Ed has always been blue, but beden eğitimi is coffee-colored. The differences with numbers, I could chalk up to relating them with whatever pictures I was given when I was first learning their names, but one cannot present an educational depiction of the concept of Tuesday. I'd be dying to hear anyone else's experience with this. I'm super curious, especially, to hear if this difference still stands in people who *grew up* bilingual.
www.iflscience.com
New research has shown that vampire bats form social bonds by sharing freshly drained blood with unfamiliar members of their roost. It might sound desperately gross, but this behavior is showing scientists that vampire bats are incredibly prosocial animals. "Food sharing in vampire bats is like how a lot of birds regurgitate food for their offspring. But what's special with vampire bats is they do this for other adults, eventually even with some previous strangers," Gerald Carter, lead author of the new study and assistant professor of evolution, ecology, and organismal biology at Ohio State University, said in a statement.
In 2015, Democratic Elk Grove Assemblyman Jim Cooper voted for Senate Bill 34, which restricted law enforcement from sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state authorities. In 2023, now-Sacramento County Sheriff Cooper appears to be doing just that. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a digital rights group, has sent Cooper a letter requesting that the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office cease sharing ALPR data with out-of-state agencies that could use it to prosecute someone for seeking an abortion. According to documents that the Sheriff’s Office provided EFF through a public records request, it has shared license plate reader data with law enforcement agencies in states that have passed laws banning abortion, including Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas. Adam Schwartz, EFF senior staff attorney, called automated license plate readers “a growing threat to everyone’s privacy ... that are out there by the thousands in California.”
It has come to my attention that the use of English in official communication is strongly discouraged in both Italy and Canada, carrying a hefty fine in both countries. As such, I believe it is only sensible to defederate from every non-franco-italian instance effective immediately, and to replace our lacking dev Ernest as I do not believe he has the required skillset at this time. All fediverse contributions shall be carried out henceforth in a mix of both languages to maximize benefit to the reader. Grazmercie
Tbh, this has been on my mind for the past two days, so I hope you guys don't mind if I unload it here. I tend to obsess and I figure if no one cares, then at least I can get it out of my head instead of thinking about it all the time. Also sorry for the length, I promise I have a doctor's note. I don't overly mind all the duplicate reddit subs and I'm *extremely* interested to see what this place (and the fediverse in general) become. As a very recent, not-particularly-savvy ex-redditor, I didn't even know federation was *possible.* The rest of this may or may not come off as cynical (I can't tell), but I really do have high hopes for what this place could be. It could go meh, and crash and burn in a fireball of shallow snark and cynicism like everything else in this day and age. But it could go so right if we play our cards right and learn to *adapt* to this instead of demanding the same things not a lot of us even *liked,* just because that's what's familiar. It doesn't seem to be the majority opinion as yet, but I've been bothered that some are so geared towards making this a second reddit that, before our temporary cloudflare isolation, I already saw questions about which sub dedicated to Whatever out of all platforms everywhere is going to be the real main sub. Instances have a different strength here than what reddit was used for, but I've been worrying this won't be recognized by those of us too used to reddit or too young to even remember forums. The instinct, coming from a one-stop shop, is to recreate that. This isn't possible in the fediverse and is the exact opposite of its intent. There doesn't have to be just one "correct" community across every existing instance. Even *usernames* aren't sacrosanct here. We can spread out as far as we want and never reach the horizon. The focus lends itself very well to the closer, kinder bubble communities found in the 90s and 00s. I miss able to recognize people by avatar, something that is already happening here that makes it feel home-y. I miss being able to take part in anything *resembling* a kind and manageable community instead of my only socialization having to come from Asswipe # 8675309 in the only non-dead subreddit about Thing, that happens to be a 14 million strong screaming match. I miss being able to speak respectfully without being dogpiled in a mad grab for internet head pats. We can do all that here if we want, but we have to set the precedent early. I'd rather be subbed to 5 identical mags across 5 different instances, each with their own individual style of community, than be stuck with The Instance That Has The Hades Sub On It because that one got created first/on the largest instance. And then, lost in the crowd, the fighting starts again because on the internet, hurling insults and winning arguments is the only way the faceless horde *might* give you a thumbs up before also beating you. The way reddit functioned and interacted with itself was our norm, but when cloudflare is turned off and federation is in full swing again, please don't make this another reddit. I want the old internet back, and we have a chance.
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Nepenthe
Nepenthe@ kbin.socialRexxitor. Biology nerd. Roguelites, indie games, and TRPGs. Drowning in unused yarn, unread books, and mandatory cat hair.