Sapphire
@lilbluegem.bsky.social
180 followers 130 following 890 posts
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fairless.xyz
Windows 10 goes out of support today. My fave useless fact about w10 is that the iconic blue desktop background is a *photograph* - not CGI.

Tiny 'making of' vid here - youtu.be/_2RacX9DgWM...
Three images showing photographers in a studio, standing around a black curtained area with a projector and a 'Windows' logo etched onto a glass pane. The lower image shows a version of the iconic blue windows background, with blue lasers outlining and passing through an angled Windows logos against a dark background.
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stevesteverers.whaleoilcandles.com
Who ever could have forseen
lilymasonphd.bsky.social
Unfortunately, reality is only apparent *after* elections.
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grumble.social
I feel like at some point people on social media started seeing literally everything as performative; a way to communicate how good and proper a person they are, rather than leaning into the messy side of being human which is that things are rarely so cut and dried.
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robmacwolf.thevoice.dog
When we write or draw porn or erotica, we get banned from having a bank account and our livelihoods get seized even if we give it away for free.

When billionaires steal what we've written or drawn to churn out a slop-approximate of porn, they're allowed to charge for it.
mattburgess1.bsky.social
Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year
We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.
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mortalityplays.bsky.social
Rigsby WI is so so so good. It's a patient, intelligent, incisive tapestry of stories that reflects characters and their social environments back and forth like a hall of mirrors to illuminate all the small angles and nuances of What It's Like. it's the realisation of webcomics as literary medium.
secase.bsky.social
In the hopes of getting more eyeballs on Rigsby WI: Burn it Down leading up to the print edition's Kickstarter launch, I'll be posting Burn it Down pages in this thread over the next few days! If you havent read it, check it out ⬇️
KS: www.kickstarter.com/projects/iro...
Webcomic: rigsbywi.com

(1/?)
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robertbohan.bsky.social
Politicians who meet fascists half way, are just fascists.

Newsom is all about publicity & nothing about integrity.

It’s been depressing watching American ppl hero-worship a power crazed sell-out. It’s not just Kimberly Guilfoyle & cosmetic surgery he has in common with the Trumps. READ this:
erininthemorning.com
1. Yesterday, the press gave Gavin Newsom favorable coverage for signing pro-LGBTQ+ bills.

Little noticed, however, was that he vetoed one of the most important ones: a bill allowing trans people 12 month HRT stockpiles, protecting them from federal threats.

Subscribe to support our journalism.
Gavin Newsom Vetoes Important HRT Stockpiling Bill For Trans Californians, Signs Other Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills
The bill would have allowed transgender people to maintain a safe supply of medication in the era of government crackdowns on care.
www.erininthemorning.com
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themountaingoats.bsky.social
Please be conscious if you protest this weekend that there are feds at the protest. They look like you and they sound like you, not like Steve Buscemi in that one clip with the skateboard. Thinking you can spot them is self delusion. Nobody you haven’t met needs to know your last name.
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smallgourd.bsky.social
my partner & i are reading The Mabinogion (Davies translation) out loud before bed and "it is unfortunate that I spent one hundred and forty pounds worth of precious ointment on a man without knowing who he is" had me crying laughing reading The Lady of the Well the other night
swilua.bsky.social
One of the hardest things about so many surviving medieval texts—particularly in Arthurian Legend—is you don’t know if they were meant to be taken seriously, or if they were meant to be jokes, told to drunk people, while drunk

This is one reason Monty Python is FR one of the best retellings
scalzi.com
Most "classics" are boring as fuck to a modern reader in no small part because the context of the story is not understood by them and so many of the allusions and "inside jokes" known to then-contemporary readers have been lost in time and in translation
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dieworkwear.bsky.social
About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages
Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.
lilbluegem.bsky.social
It’s going to depend on the nature of the divorce …

I imagine most divorces come after years of emotional injuries in the relationship, which make it hard to stay close.

But some people can manage to communicate well enough to end things before unrecoverable hurts occur.
lilbluegem.bsky.social
Holy crap, that’s an intense and emotional story — I couldn’t put it down …
secase.bsky.social
In the hopes of getting more eyeballs on Rigsby WI: Burn it Down leading up to the print edition's Kickstarter launch, I'll be posting Burn it Down pages in this thread over the next few days! If you havent read it, check it out ⬇️
KS: www.kickstarter.com/projects/iro...
Webcomic: rigsbywi.com

(1/?)
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bretdevereaux.bsky.social
Maybe this is simply a difference in the expected 'rate' of knew knowledge, but this take puzzles me, because there's quite a bit of new data and studies needing to be done that I can see pretty easily in Roman history.

Knowledge creation steady and clearly visible.
A tweet by Theo Nash, which reads, "The problem is that (almost) no one, at least in the humanities, is able to produce ‘new knowledge’ at anything like the rate expected. So scholars grasp at faddish trends and voguish theories to publish books that seem exciting in the moment but have no enduring value."
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jamellebouie.net
apparently “bari weiss doesn’t actually know what journalism is” extends to getting basic facts like the name of a subject right
brandonfriedman.bsky.social
Promoting the editor-in-chief's personal side project. Zero named sources in a story that promotes the editor-in-chief's personal political position. Misspelling the subject's name. It took one day for CBS News to become a conservative blog.

www.cbsnews.com/video/some-n...
CBS News: Some NYPD officers worry about Mandani becoming NYC mayor the Free Press reports.
lilbluegem.bsky.social
Best retelling of Columbus ever
patrickwyman.bsky.social
It's the exact equivalent of being mad at NASA for telling you that your idea about Mars being closer than we thought is wrong, and then acting vindicated when you run into an asteroid on your otherwise-doomed voyage into space.
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patrickwyman.bsky.social
My favorite aspect of the Columbus legend is him getting rejected by the Portuguese gets spun as them not recognizing the genius of his idea. No - he went into a roomful of expert navigators and made basic math mistakes, they thought he was a moron, and they wouldn't fund his idea on that basis.
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mariesposeets.bsky.social
Red-breasted merganser watercolor comic, sorry had to after seeing bsky.app/profile/hibb...
Watercolor sketch: a male red-breasted merganser does the courtship dance of sticking his butt out of the water and looking weird (see real-life  red-breasted merganser mating dance). Says: Huhhhughhuh s'up ladies, huhuhuh. 
A group of female mergansers on rocks are watching. First one: Ugh. Second one: Creep. 
Third one is gawking in delight and her tail feathers are fanning like crazy trying to cool her down.
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bleary.off-the-records.com
If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.
Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?
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junlper.beer
we need to abolish this shit
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notalawyer.bsky.social
the actual story here, which the media never talks about, is that police in this country have become a discrete right-wing political operation. the story isn't about cops leaving (they're lying about that), it's about the police trying to exert influence over elections.
misoshnik.bsky.social
Lmao is this supposed to be a bad thing?
A tweet from Bari Weiss that says “"It's shaken me to my core," a lieutenant said of Mamdani's unexpected victory in June. "The absolute dread I feel is palpable.
"
Today in @TheFP our @Olivia_Reingold talks to the cops who say they will walk if Zohran Mamdani is elected in November:”
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ceej.online
caught my vampire neighbor creeping through my front door. he claims my saying “for sure dude, we should definitely hang out sometime” the other night counts as an invitation, but I disagree. we’re on hold with the etiquette hotline
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ablum.bsky.social
We had Angela Davis speak at my university a couple of years back. One of the many insightful things she said - protest in the way that aligns with your passion. If that’s poetry do poetry or music etc. Because then you will be able to sustain it. If naked bike rides are your passion, 100% do that.
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Someone in my mentions is upset because these people haven’t suffered the worst at ICE’s hands and therefore they shouldn’t be praised for being out on the streets?

Yeah, no. To push back on these people we need everyone — especially those with relative privilege — to get up and get involved.
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Portland, you magnificent weirdos