Brinens and Things

(There's quite a bit to catch up on here, so I've added extra line breaks between entries to make it less of a jumble of text.)

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Comments on my own posts:

[fairly mild cw: embarrassment squick] I didn't *make* any comments on my own posts this round (apart from postscripts/tangents written alongside the OPs), but I note that I did receive two comments on "I continue to live in an alternate universe" through Tumblr.

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: what it says on the tin] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by flaxseedthot; partly in response to rustingbridges) Disney World during 9/11.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Second-generation hyphenated surnames.


[arguably cw: medical, unsanitary, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by akaanonymouth; partly in response to sigmaleph) Household logistics, safety nets, and the importance of spare toothbrushes. [two comments]


[arguably cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by seaglass_takechan) Reporting a violation of the food/pretty-rock binary.


[cw: nsfw text, apocalypse, (arguably) drugs] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by femmenietzsche) In which Brin has second thoughts about whether "I could see myself using [AI-powered writing commissions] for pornography, but even then only because I have very narrow tastes" would be a good idea in practice.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) Email usage patterns and organisation.


[arguably cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) High-quality socks (and how sometimes the cardboard-sole boots are the better deal).


[cw: illness, apocalypse, (arguably) amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms; partly in response to sigmaleph) In the future, "zoonosis" will be a word everyone knows; knowing *where* they learned it is another matter. [~three comments, one of which is new]


[cw: food, illness, poverty, (arguably) animal abuse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by augustheart) If lab grown meat became widely available and easily affordable, would you eat it? (At least two people were too quick on the ball and read the draft version of this that I posted slightly too soon, so if you read the non-postscripted version of this do note that there *is* more.)


[cw: unsanitary, (arguably) violence] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tanadrin) The relative merits of fear, shame, and anger.


[cw: aging, injury, poison, death, (arguably) illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) Independent wealth vs a chance to remake your body.


[cw: illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by thearchivebaby) Decorated respirators and the Glorious Transhumanist Future.


[cw: corporate bullshit, nsfw text, (arguably) illness, (arguably) apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by soolagna-meow) Mourning broken tools, and searching for aligned replacements.


[fairly mild cw: death, injury] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ultirex) How would you do if dropped at a point on Earth outputted by a random coordinates generator?

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Links:

[fairly strong cw: illness] [Mastodon (Twitter); Wayback] (by librarianshipwreck) I know it takes time to get over things.


[cw: corporate bullshit, apocalypse] [WordPress; Wayback] (by librarianshipwreck) What Y2K can teach us about Twitter. Particularly notable quote:

And in the wake of Y2K proving to be something of a non-event—thanks to the efforts of the legions of people who got to work fixing the problem—the sort of introspection that Y2K called for did not occur. Instead, people and societies only deepened their reliance on computer technologies and by extension the executives and companies that controlled those systems.

[The Intercept; Wayback] (by Nikita Mazurov; h/t Bruce Schneier) Some image-manipulation programs--including, but not limited to, the one in Google Docs--leave the original image data inside the file of a cropped image, allowing the recipient to uncrop it and reveal bits that you specifically did not want them to see.



Three laugh-rule entries:
[cw: (strong) rape, (strong) nsfw text, amnesia] [Read Only Mind; Wayback] (by scifiscribbler) I did not *like* this work, and I shudder to think how low the author's standards must be to think that *this* constitutes "wholesome", but that opening line is amazing:

The television was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel.

[arguably cw: theft] [Vice; Wayback] (by Joseph Cox) You know how with sci-fi shows we're always yelling at the screen about "why are you people still using voiceprint authentication as if it means anything when you also have good voice synthesis"? Yeah.

To create the voice, I recorded about five minutes of speech and uploaded it to ElevenLabs (for the audio clips, I read sections of Europe’s data protection law).

[cw: what it says on the tin, nsfw image] [Substack; Wayback] (by Sam Kriss)

they’d got the impression that I was one of those people who really has his finger on the pulse. I told them that I definitely wasn’t, I just made things up with enough confidence that people believed me, just like I’ve made up exactly 45% of everything I’m writing here

Also the rambling manifesto containing "谷歌翻译应用程序". (It's funnier if you *can't* read Chinese, though I expect it's still funny if you can.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: spoilers for Star Trek DS9 season 6, Christian fundamentalism] The postscript to the one about Admiral Ross's handling of the Prophets

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by wingedcatgirl) Ask memes and their transferability to Dreamwidth.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) How to get rid of individual browser autocompletes.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by little-brisk) David Tennant is, inexplicably, not playing Aziraphale.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by harrysgucciteam) Which stove burner is your favourite?

[cw: puberty, aging, (fairly mild) amnesia] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by overlordtulip; partly in response to rustingbridges) Having a pre-teen girl body forever really wouldn't be that bad, especially when you consider how small the difference in physical form is between "12-year-old girl" and "18-year-old woman". [two comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) Going to a coffeeshop for nine years to hang out with the staff: who cares if it's now a mattress store?

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by thedarlingone) Video-game serial monogamy.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by rustingbridges) Peasant-tier opinions on New York pizza.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) Morphological-freedom memes; browser extensions for backing up comment/post drafts. (In general I won't include meme prompts in these roundups, but this has other conversation.) [two comments]

[cw: violence] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by rustingbridges) Anger-fueled property damage in fiction, and its level of realism.

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Links:

[alice maz; Wayback] (by Alice Maz) This post was going around Tumblr a while back, and now that I'm shifting back towards Flight Rising I've been thinking about it again. I'm less ruthless than Alice--in part out of another form of self-interest--but I still find some of the stunts she pulled as a player merchant on a Minecraft server inspiring and/or relatable, and all of them are impressive and fascinating.

Laugh rule:
[Decoder Ring Theatre; Wayback (although Wayback won't do you *much* good, as it's mostly audio)] (by Gregg Taylor)

You're familiar with commentary tracks, you've seen DVDs, you've seen television, where someone, you know, plays an episode and then talks all over it and ruins it forever? That's what I'm going to do now!

Also:

Ooh, *that's* how I'm gonna pass some time. With a musical cue! And some snoring! Oh, the artistry!

(no but seriously, the Red Panda Adventures are amazing and while I have not had a chance to try much of Gregg Taylor's other works they are probably also great; highly recommended)