wayfarren
electrical engineering student who smells specifically of soldering fumes, estrogen, and motorcycle exhaust (i love electronics, design, electronic music/dubstep, motorcycles)
65 posts
Latest Posts by wayfarren
If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...
Start helping with citizen science projects
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
--
I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help
Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.
'I asked chat GPT-'
oh did you? You asked something that steals shit to lie to you about a subject? And you just tell me this like I care to know what it said? Like I wanted to know its opinion? I regularly ask my cat Cheesey Gordita Crunch about many subjects and I think I trust his judgement more than whatever bullshit ur shitty algorithm spat out
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Climb aboard, then!” But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown. “Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”
___
…But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the frog felt a subtle motion on its back, and in a panic dived deep beneath the rushing waters, leaving the scorpion to drown.
“It was going to sting me anyway,” muttered the frog, emerging on the other side of the river. “It was inevitable. You all knew it. Everyone knows what those scorpions are like. It was self-defense.”
___
…But no sooner had they cast off from the bank, the frog felt the tip of a stinger pressed lightly against the back of its neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the frog.
“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
They swam in silence to the other end of the river, where the scorpion climbed off, leaving the frog fuming.
“After the kindness I showed you!” said the frog. “And you threatened to kill me in return?”
“Kindness?” said the scorpion. “To only invite me on your back after you knew I was defenseless, unable to use my tail without killing myself? My dear frog, I only treated you as I was treated. Your kindness was as poisoned as a scorpion’s sting.”
___
…“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
“You have a point,” the frog acknowledged. “But once we get to dry land, couldn’t you sting me then without repercussion?”
“All I want is to cross the river safely,” said the scorpion. “Once I’m on the other side I would gladly let you be.”
“But I would have to trust you on that,” said the frog. “While you’re pressing a stinger to my neck. By ferrying you to land I’d be be giving up the one deterrent I hold over you.”
“But by the same logic, I can’t possibly withdraw my stinger while we’re still over water,” the scorpion protested.
The frog paused in the middle of the river, treading water. “So, I suppose we’re at an impasse.”
The river rushed around them. The scorpion’s stinger twitched against the frog’s unbroken skin. “I suppose so,” the scorpion said.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Absolutely not!” said the frog, and dived beneath the waters, and so none of them learned anything.
___
A scorpion, being unable to swim, asked a turtle (as in the original Persian version of the fable) to carry it across the river. The turtle readily agreed, and allowed the scorpion aboard its shell. Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell. The turtle, swimming placidly, failed to notice.
They reached the other side of the river, and parted ways as friends.
___
…Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell.
The turtle, hearing the tap of the scorpion’s sting, was offended at the scorpion’s ungratefulness. Thankfully, having been granted the powers to both defend itself and to punish evil, the turtle sank beneath the waters and drowned the scorpion out of principle.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” sneered the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back.”
The scorpion pleaded earnestly. “Do you think so little of me? Please, I must cross the river. What would I gain from stinging you? I would only end up drowning myself!”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Even a scorpion knows to look out for its own skin. Climb aboard, then!”
But as they forged through the rushing waters, the scorpion grew worried. This frog thinks me a ruthless killer, it thought. Would it not be justified in throwing me off now and ridding the world of me? Why else would it agree to this? Every jostle made the scorpion more and more anxious, until the frog surged forward with a particularly large splash, and in panic the scorpion lashed out with its stinger.
“I knew it,” snarled the frog, as they both thrashed and drowned. “A scorpion cannot change its nature.”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. The frog agreed, but no sooner than they were halfway across the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.
“I’ve only myself to blame,” sighed the frog, as they both sank beneath the waters. “You, you’re a scorpion, I couldn’t have expected anything better. But I knew better, and yet I went against my judgement! And now I’ve doomed us both!”
“You couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion mildly. “It’s your nature.”
___
…“Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“Alas, I was of two natures,” said the scorpion. “One said to gratefully ride your back across the river, and the other said to sting you where you stood. And so both fought, and neither won.” It smiled wistfully. “Ah, it would be nice to be just one thing, wouldn’t it? Unadulterated in nature. Without the capacity for conflict or regret.”
___
“By the way,” said the frog, as they swam, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s on the other side of the river?”
“It’s the journey,” said the scorpion. “Not the destination.”
___
…“What’s on the other side of anything?” said the scorpion. “A new beginning.”
___
…”Another scorpion to mate with,” said the scorpion. “And more prey to kill, and more living bodies to poison, and a forthcoming lineage of cruelties that you will be culpable in.”
___
…”Nothing we will live to see, I fear,” said the scorpion. “Already the currents are growing stronger, and the river seems like it shall swallow us both. We surge forward, and the shoreline recedes. But does that mean our striving was in vain?”
___
“I love you,” said the scorpion.
The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”
“Absolutely. Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog. Might as well be scared of breathing air. And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”
The frog swam on, the both of them silent.
___
“I’m so tired,” murmured the frog eventually. “How much further to the other side? I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming. I’ve been treading water. And it’s getting so very dark.”
“Shh,” the scorpion said. “Don’t be afraid.”
The frog’s legs kicked out weakly. “How long has it been? We’re lost. We’re lost! We’re doomed to be cast about the waters forever. There is no land. There’s nothing on the other side, don’t you see!”
“Shh, shh,” said the scorpion. “My venom is a hallucinogenic. Beneath its surface, the river is endlessly deep, its currents carrying many things.”
“You - You’ve killed us both,” said the frog, and began to laugh deliriously. “Is this - is this what it’s like to drown?”
“We’ve killed each other,” said the scorpion soothingly. “My venom in my glands now pulsing through your veins, the waters of your birthing pool suffusing my lungs. We are engulfing each other now, drowning in each other. I am breathless. Do you feel it? Do you feel my sting pierced through your heart?”
“What a foolish thing to do,” murmured the frog. “No logic. No logic to it at all.”
“We couldn’t help it,” whispered the scorpion. “It’s our natures. Why else does anything in the world happen? Because we were made for this from birth, darling, every moment inexplicable and inevitable. What a crazy thing it is to fall in love, and yet - It’s all our fault! We are both blameless. We’re together now, darling. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”
___
“It’s funny,” said the frog. “I can’t say that I trust you, really. Or that I even think very much of you and that nasty little stinger of yours to begin with. But I’m doing this for you regardless. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s strange. Why would I do this? I want to help you, want to go out of my way to help you. I let you climb right onto my back! Now, whyever would I go and do a foolish thing like that?”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Come aboard, then!” But no sooner had the scorpion mounted the frog’s back than it began to sting, repeatedly, while still safely on the river’s bank.
The frog groaned, thrashing weakly as the venom coursed through its veins, beginning to liquefy its flesh. “Ah,” it muttered. “For some reason I never considered this possibility.”
“Because you were never scared of me,” the scorpion whispered in its ear. “You were never scared of dying. In a past life you wore a shell and sat in judgement. And then you were reborn: soft-skinned, swift, unburdened, as new and vulnerable as a child, moving anew through a world of children. How could anyone ever be cruel, you thought, seeing the precariousness of it all?” The scorpion bowed its head and drank. “How could anyone kill you without killing themselves?”
Messaging people for the first time is so hard. What am I supposed to say? Like, "You seem really odd and your blog intrigues me. Do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters?" What! Whatever. I will just follow you back and stare at your blog with my big beautiful brown eyes.
people often ask me; "Foone, you're an amateur physical media historian, when is it spelled disc, and when is it disk?"
Well it's simple! Discs grow down from the ceiling, and disks grow up from the floor.
So, like, universal basic income.
One of the things I’ve heard people say is how, you know, you need income as a motivation to make people work. And I’ve heard some great arguments against that.
But also.
There are a lot of low-paid jobs that actually make the world a crappier place. Like, if we could just pay everyone in the fast fashion industry to stay home and not go to work, the world would be a much better place. If we paid people enough that they didn’t need to work in factories, then large-scale manufacture of crappy stuff wouldn’t be feasible anymore.
Like, we’re basically in a post-scarcity society. We have more than enough food and clothing for everyone. This manic capitalist mindset where we force people to go to jobs they hate to remove value from the world is insane, right?
And maybe if we instituted this we’d lose fast food corporations and stuff. But I bet they’d be replaced by small restaurants run by people who are passionate about what they do.
transregional soda gets pop sugary
Transgender frog gets hop surgery
huh. I did the BDSM test but I was expecting "submissive" to rank higher.
When I was early on in my transition I got in a Lyft, and the driver was this big country guy. I was a little nervous so I just sat quietly in the back.
After a moment he changed the music on his phone to what sounded like a Hatsune Miku song. Curiosity got the better of me, so I finally spoke up and said “is this Hatsune Miku?”
And he said “Yep. You looked uncomfortable, and I know Transgender women like Hatsune Miku, so I thought it might help.”
I think about that interaction a lot.
this is like lingerie to me
THIS EXACTLY!!! also for sensory stuff too. like are you hiking and absolutely miserable because you hate the way that sweat and dirt feels on your skin? turn off that sensation until you're ready
it's about full and total control. and for me, i think it'd be pretty cool to wrench on myself, too
Sometimes, I want to be a robot girl. Outside of the context of kink, I mean, which is what I largely see on this site. I mean the kinky stuff, too, but just what the ramifications of being a machine could be intrigue me a lot.
Robot girl who can temporarily disable emotions that aren't useful or socially appropriate.
Robot girl who can power off when she's overwhelmed.
Robot girl who can patch her missing knowledge about social situations and rules.
Robot girl who can change her body at will.
Robot girl who shows you her operating system because she wants you to know her. Really, really, know her.
Robot girl connected to a whole network of other robot girls so that she never feels alone.
I just want to be robot girl.
He made her an offer she couldn't refuse
i want you to know that this is my favourite reaction image
whats so funny about this is that i think that "FUCK" is edited in. the original drawing was flug thinking about "The Noid" minecraft skin
I think people on here operate on a very weird definition of "conventionally attractive" where anything humanoid is already too normal for them. When society at large is like "if you're not skinny and white and able bodied and cisgender you're basically unfuckable"
Maybe I should embrace the robotgirl vibe and make myself an ordered list of priorities as a decision tree. And then when I am struggling I can look at it and try to use it to decide on a better course of action.
Uk peeps!! Let’s get this going! 🏳️⚧️🇬🇧
every damn time i see this post it gets to me. my fucking heart aaaughh
future archaeologists will know you were (not) a boy
tragic irony has struck me. i had a mediocre day filled with sorrow towards my past self, largely related to academic performance, and just now my friends were doing today's wordle and so i decided to do it as well (i don't normally do them). i was halfway to tears (because of the previously mentioned reasons) while doing it and then i got it after cheating (by clearing my browser's cache for that page to give me more chances because i used some dumb shitpost words) and the word was
"dummy"
im gonna lose it. poetically ironic. absolute cinema. i burst out laughing
wait that post was about the 'valley girl' accent right?
i say this as a fellow californian, aren't the standard hollywood california accent and the valleygirl accent two different things? like they sound different to me and i know for certain i have the regular california accent
wait is the valleygirl accent just an exaggeration? do i sound like that to other people????
one of the funniest things I see people say about "standard english" btw is californians who are like "yeah basically all american english speakers speak the same way so it makes sense to call that 'standard american english'" because you know they only perceive it that way because californian english has like every single vowel merger simultaneously so they can't tell the difference between other american english varieties. they're fish who don't know they're wet
* (Oh, these parentheses I keep opening?
* (I'm collecting them.
* (Right now, I'm 1,762 parentheses deep.
* (Oh, my precious parentheses... (I don't ever want to close them!
How to get a PhD?
In five easy steps, you can earn a real PhD! Here's how:
Choose a subject in which you can get a PhD, such as Caviar Debrining, Musical Glassware Demolition, or Cunnilingus.
Enroll in a graduate school that offers a PhD course in your topic, such as CU Boulder, the Academy of Raya Lucaria, or the Royal Institute for the Study and Performance of Cunnilingus.
Achieve 80-140 hours of class credits in relevant coursework, such as Advanced Bullshitting, Making Up MLA Format Citations That Sound Real, and Warping Irrelevant Quotations So They Will Appear To Fit Your Points (Cunning Linguistics).
Compose a dissertation in the medium demanded by your field, such as an Essay, Scientific Treatise, or Oral Presentation.
Defend your dissertation. This is nothing to be afraid of and is merely titled a "defense" in an antiquated sense of the word. You can defend your dissertation in many academic ways, such as a sword duel, outlasting a professor in the pain induction box, or of course, besting them in Competitive Cunnilingus. This last one is naturally the most reliable way to graduate Cum Laude.
enough of this "androids who dream of being human" shtick. more androids who love being androids, and are lowkey sorry for humans bc that shit sounds exhausting
UGH so true!!!! this is what i keep saying. AI/ML is an incredibly useful tool. we can catch cancer earlier, speed up design processes via structural optimization, catch industrial accidents before they happen, and figure out where fruits are on a tree and which are ripe to automate farming!!! but everyone is focused on genAI and stealing from artists. it's so infuriating to watch
at my university, ai use is a pretty hotly contested topic. cheating with it is a problem. and now the university is partnering with openAI to give us all free chatgpt??????? that's insane to me
a friend at a different university sent me a video of their chancellor talking about ai use and its benefits. the entire video was ai-generated. and it was really fucking convincing.
engineers dodging the lockheed martin and raytheon job offers like neo in the matrix
“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”
No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.
some notable catchphrases of 2013:
bitch I might be
do she got the booty ? she doooooooooo !
swiggity swag
the D
wen u mom com home and make hte spagehti
“ hello______, im dad “
AYYY LMAO
W R I T I N G I N T E N S E W O R D S L I K E T H I S
perfect _____ don’t exis-
And now, the weather
at least 2 potato
we’ve come full circle !
life hack :
[ __________ INTENSIFIES]
so many
such doge. much wow. very smile.
mahogany
*sweats nervously*
same.
spooper hot choclety milk
#SHERLOCKLIVES
day 1 at the communal puzzle club: i see a puzzle with a sign next to it that says "please help with our communal puzzle" and i say to myself "don't mind if I do" and did the whole thing
my silly and tired engineering brain saw this and tetris-effect'd my way into dividing and eliminating the factors of both "medusa" and "dyke" leaving 1
by our powers combined....