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:

The one about Signal [four comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by reasonableapproximation) Radical self-expression through clothing.

[cw: embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in response to sigmaleph) The confusing proliferation of names in Worm. [two comments, three if you count the tags]

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by BagelofDeath) Honest Chinese food reviews from a Chinese restaurant owner. (Also, advice on how to get good chicken fingers in Canada.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by grayestofghosts) Sometimes reading less is a reasonable response to changing circumstances.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism) Some types of professionally preserved foods we highly recommend trying.

[maybe cw: stalking] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by nerviovago; in response to plain-dealing-villain and moral-autism) Hiding secret passageways inside fake clothes dryers.

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Links:

[cw: nsfw text, (mild) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by arihi) A new repository for mind-control erotica, one that is *not* built on 90's tech with 90's limitations.

[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley) I thought this was going to be about priest-based Age of Empires builds, but the thing it actually is is neat too.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Bloomberg; Wayback crawling forbidden] (by Matt Levine)

Or combine the last two approaches: “At the end of each trading day from now on, the number of Tesla shares will be adjusted, via split or reverse split, such that each day’s closing price is $420.69.” A share of Tesla could represent a variable percentage interest in the company, but always be worth $420.69. Elon you can live this dream if you want it enough.

[Kiwix; Wayback] (by Stéphane Coillet-Matillon)

I wish I could tell you how we did it, but it involved some C++, Typescript, and sacrificing a few chicken. Only two of these three worked, and there’s still some discussion about which.

[cw: politics] [The Guardian; Wayback] (by Lauren Aratani)
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There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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My discourse-o-meter pings this post as "moderate: post publicly on a non-viral medium". I think this is because the person immediately before me in the reblog chain is likely to respond well, but OP is probably hostile (and 28k notes is not *quite* enough to be confident that they've stopped paying attention).

[cw: discourse, ableism, arguably racism]


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