I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

This is fascinating and I love the part with the mushrooms and the worms if this really works but my favorite part is that we spent decades like “oh no....oil is soaking into fur and feathers....if only we had something that could soak up all this oil”

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my fav

40,000 years ago, early humans painted hands on the wall of a cave. This morning, my baby cousin began finger painting. All of recorded history happened between these two paintings of human hands. The Nazca Lines and the Mona Lisa. The first TransAtlantic flight and the first voyage to the Moon. Humanity invented the wheel, the telescope, and the nuclear bomb. We eradicated wild poliovirus types 2 and 3. We discovered radio waves, dinosaurs, and the laws of thermodynamics. Freedom Riders crossed the South. Hippies burned their draft cards. Countless genocides, scientific advancements, migrations, and rebellions. More than a hundred billion humans lived and died between these two paintings—one on a sheet of paper, and one on the inside of a cave. At the dawn of time, ancient humans stretched out their hands. And this morning, a child reached back. 

A Timeline of Humanity:

really funny that every website is in an arms race to make itself as bad as possible and immediately someone makes a firefox extension to fix it

avg day on late Web 2.0

I don't think Reddit gets enough credit for how hilariously buckwild the subreddit system is.

Like it makes sense on the surface. The subreddits are all topic-focused independent message boards, each with their own moderator teams, and you can curate which ones show up on your feed. Subscribe to the ones that suit your interests and bam you're good.

Except the question of WHO is in charge of every subreddit is an objectively hilarious system. Anyone can create a subreddit. Under any name. Who holds the keys to the kingdom is strictly determined by whoever managed to camp the name first. It's like tumblr URL wars except if whoever managed to grab the URL "homestuck" got to be defacto in charge of the entire homestuck fandom.

Or at least they get to be in charge until they anger the populace and get ousted, Julius Caesar style, by the team of fellow moderators they brought aboard, or until they voluntarily sign the deed over because they don't want to deal with 600,000 angry homestuck fans every single day, or they get mutinied against and all the REAL homestuck fans flock over to "curatedhomestuck" or "homestuckcirclejerk" or "homestuckcirclejerkcirclejerk".

You get seemingly benign subreddits about things like baking or kittens that have absolutely batshit rules because the whole thing is being run by a paranoid and power-hungry 23-year-old from Arkansas. You get inter-subreddit beef where the mods of r/cutekittensdoingcutethings will ban you from their subreddit because you have a history of posting in r/genshinimpact. You get subreddits that fall to ruin and spam because the moderators in charge vanished into the night without passing power along to anyone else.

Redditors love to complain about Reddit moderators and this surprises me not at all because there is simply no possible way that the Reddit moderation system could be a smooth-running machine when its defining underlying mechanic is First Come First Serve. And that's hilarious to me. That's hilarious. Political system where the King is chosen from among the populace of people who comment "first" on Youtube videos. You can't beat that.

Don't know how many times I've showed a non-Tumblr person a Tumblr post and had the whole thing derail because the poor soul actually read someone's user name.

"Why does it say--" *squints at the screen* "....aziraphale's flaming cock??"

"Oh no uh, ignore that."

I hope every ‘look at the sky’ person finds a ‘let me take this picture of the sky for them’ person

To me, honestly, the biggest thing Tumblr has going for itself is the fact that no one uses it.

Originally I was thinking, in terms of "why do I use Tumblr and not other sites?" that the thing going for it is that it's a Post Anonymous Bullshit site. And this is true, and important, but also Tumblr isn't the only Post Anonymous Bullshit site.

I think the key power that Tumblr holds over me is that it's the Post Anonymous Bullshit site that no one uses.

And the reason that's so clutch is because of how much safety it adds. No matter what kind of office or acquaintance small-talk spirals into the direction of social media, which, perhaps in an unthinking moment, causes you to mention you use Tumblr. Even if your conversation partner acts interested in this detail, they won't follow you. Twitter? Tiktok? Fuck man, the person could whip out their phone on the spot and look you up. Tumblr? No way in hell. They'd have to download an app. Make an account. Check it regularly? Just to see you posting "happy fuck him flat friday"? No.

And on the absolute off chance this person does have a Tumblr, and does follow you, well they probably have all the same problems you do that's led them to be active on this site in 2023 so you should be pretty safe in a very girl what are YOU doing at the devil's sacrament kind of way.

please look at this picture junji ito drew of his moms crusty white dog

Why would you hide that in the notes

hat simulator 2 fishing edition