resting witch face 😷
@compostwitch.bsky.social
Repost heavy & sometimes 🔞
They/them, antiracist Heathen, AuDHD, weird nerd into plants, bugs, string, and human systems. And too many podcasts. Chaparral / Muwekma Ohlone land.
They/them, antiracist Heathen, AuDHD, weird nerd into plants, bugs, string, and human systems. And too many podcasts. Chaparral / Muwekma Ohlone land.
[standing on treeless hardpan soil] strong floor, no ceiling
[Up on a high point in the Nebraska Sandhills, not a building or tree in sight in any direction] Strong Floor, No Ceiling
[trudging across a large parking lot in the late November sleet] Strong Floor, No Ceiling
November 30, 2025 at 9:45 PM
[standing on treeless hardpan soil] strong floor, no ceiling
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
One of the best worldbuilding guides you can read is Tolkien's notes on translation, where he talks about the fact that *everything* you write is in practice being translated into English; is is no more anachronistic to use the word "September" than it is use the word "sword" or "house" or "hello".
Not sure how I feel when a book tells me that instead of "12 months" they have "10 arcs," which are each 40 days long, and they all have names like Blossomarc, Flamearc Snowarc,.... I appreciate the world building, but couldnt we have just kept the calendar the same?
November 30, 2025 at 4:20 AM
One of the best worldbuilding guides you can read is Tolkien's notes on translation, where he talks about the fact that *everything* you write is in practice being translated into English; is is no more anachronistic to use the word "September" than it is use the word "sword" or "house" or "hello".
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
They've always hated DnD. They're just trying to come up with new reasons.
And also, as a player who started back in late 1ed/early 2nd edition I welcome the Stranger Things generation with open arms. DnD has always been a home for the people that society rejects.
And also, as a player who started back in late 1ed/early 2nd edition I welcome the Stranger Things generation with open arms. DnD has always been a home for the people that society rejects.
A game where you can do anything and they’re mad that people are doing anything.
November 30, 2025 at 4:40 PM
They've always hated DnD. They're just trying to come up with new reasons.
And also, as a player who started back in late 1ed/early 2nd edition I welcome the Stranger Things generation with open arms. DnD has always been a home for the people that society rejects.
And also, as a player who started back in late 1ed/early 2nd edition I welcome the Stranger Things generation with open arms. DnD has always been a home for the people that society rejects.
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
have written that piece before but there's a whole lot of "oh wow this generation of kids are fucked" and nowhere near enough "huh what exactly have that generation of parents been doing and how can we not do that, going forward"
People are very hard on young people on here, lack of critical thinking, lack of responsibility etc, and then you see something like this and it all makes a different kind of sense.
November 30, 2025 at 1:52 PM
have written that piece before but there's a whole lot of "oh wow this generation of kids are fucked" and nowhere near enough "huh what exactly have that generation of parents been doing and how can we not do that, going forward"
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Title text: "Maybe encouraging the publication of null results isn't enough--maybe we need a journal devoted to publishing results the study authors find personally annoying."
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3117#Transcript
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3117#Transcript
July 21, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Title text: "Maybe encouraging the publication of null results isn't enough--maybe we need a journal devoted to publishing results the study authors find personally annoying."
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3117#Transcript
Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3117#Transcript
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Effective Altruists sort of sell themselves as empirical ninjas with an absolute mastery of the math but as Émile points out here very little of it stands up to scrutiny - perhaps nothing more so than when they try and do Climate Stuff -->>>>
November 30, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Effective Altruists sort of sell themselves as empirical ninjas with an absolute mastery of the math but as Émile points out here very little of it stands up to scrutiny - perhaps nothing more so than when they try and do Climate Stuff -->>>>
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Then there are the times I'm complaining I can't find an answer about some wildly obscure thing that no one has ever put any sources about on the internet and it turns out I'm two degrees of Bluesky transactive memory from the leading scholar of the topic who shows up to give a masterclass
November 30, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Then there are the times I'm complaining I can't find an answer about some wildly obscure thing that no one has ever put any sources about on the internet and it turns out I'm two degrees of Bluesky transactive memory from the leading scholar of the topic who shows up to give a masterclass
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Ex-official explained this in a way that will stick with me forever: Within fire departments, the EMTs are overworked and underpaid and don’t have time to advocate for policy. The fire chiefs, on the other hand, have a lot more time on their hands. So fire response, not medical, dictates policy.
November 30, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Ex-official explained this in a way that will stick with me forever: Within fire departments, the EMTs are overworked and underpaid and don’t have time to advocate for policy. The fire chiefs, on the other hand, have a lot more time on their hands. So fire response, not medical, dictates policy.
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
every neoliberal policy analyst wants to "trim the fat" of society until the lean times come. community level resilience, redundancies, etc are good actually
When power went out across all of Puerto Rico on 16 April, a lot of the lights in the town of Adjuntas stayed on. A combination of experimental microgrids, solar panels, and storage kept power on for many businesses and residents.
spectrum.ieee.org/puerto-rico-...
spectrum.ieee.org/puerto-rico-...
Could Microgrids Be Puerto Rico's Answer to Endless Blackouts?
Meanwhile, feds redirect $365 million away from solar toward grid fixes
spectrum.ieee.org
November 30, 2025 at 2:27 PM
every neoliberal policy analyst wants to "trim the fat" of society until the lean times come. community level resilience, redundancies, etc are good actually
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Very hard eldercare and logistics is a subject I have extensive experience with. This article nails why it's so hard, including logistics, $, coordination w/ family, $ again, & no one wants to hear you talk about it. The author acknowledges she had a lot of resources others won't. Gift link:
Opinion | The People Holding Everyone Together Are Coming Apart
www.nytimes.com
November 30, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Very hard eldercare and logistics is a subject I have extensive experience with. This article nails why it's so hard, including logistics, $, coordination w/ family, $ again, & no one wants to hear you talk about it. The author acknowledges she had a lot of resources others won't. Gift link:
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
The key to getting a cat resistant tree is a mix of acclimating them to the new thing and having enough weight on the base to balance things if they climb.
Step 1- clean the space where the tree is going to go. That means moving things. Sometimes including the cat. 2/
Step 1- clean the space where the tree is going to go. That means moving things. Sometimes including the cat. 2/
November 23, 2025 at 5:41 PM
The key to getting a cat resistant tree is a mix of acclimating them to the new thing and having enough weight on the base to balance things if they climb.
Step 1- clean the space where the tree is going to go. That means moving things. Sometimes including the cat. 2/
Step 1- clean the space where the tree is going to go. That means moving things. Sometimes including the cat. 2/
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Really cool that now people are realizing the health and ecological problems that come with massive data centers companies are offshoring the issue to countries with no regulations and framing it as economic development
armenpress.am/en/article/1...
armenpress.am/en/article/1...
Armenia’s Hrazdan announced as location of first regional $500 million AI data center
The advanced AI infrastructure announced by Firebird, in collaboration with the Armenian government, NVIDIA, and Team, will be located in the Armenian town of...
armenpress.am
November 30, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Really cool that now people are realizing the health and ecological problems that come with massive data centers companies are offshoring the issue to countries with no regulations and framing it as economic development
armenpress.am/en/article/1...
armenpress.am/en/article/1...
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Even by the standards of anti-woke journalism this is lazy dreck. The first piece of "evidence" that older gamers are mad about wokeness is a random Reddit comment — that isn't a complaint about wokeness.
www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2025/11/2...
www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2025/11/2...
November 30, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Even by the standards of anti-woke journalism this is lazy dreck. The first piece of "evidence" that older gamers are mad about wokeness is a random Reddit comment — that isn't a complaint about wokeness.
www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2025/11/2...
www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2025/11/2...
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
This is a legitimate scientific revolution in meteorology.
Also, to be clear, these models are not the AI LLMs that most people are familiar with. They are machine learning algorithms trained on observations (actually reanalysis).
Also, to be clear, these models are not the AI LLMs that most people are familiar with. They are machine learning algorithms trained on observations (actually reanalysis).
Meteorologists are surprised that the weather model that did the best job forecasting hurricanes this year was a new one, introduced by Google. AI may be the beginning of a new era of forecasting. n.pr/49MFa1M
As the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season ends, the future of forecasting is AI
Meteorologists are surprised that the weather model that did the best job forecasting hurricanes this year was a new one, introduced by Google. AI may be the beginning of a new era of forecasting.
n.pr
November 30, 2025 at 5:55 AM
This is a legitimate scientific revolution in meteorology.
Also, to be clear, these models are not the AI LLMs that most people are familiar with. They are machine learning algorithms trained on observations (actually reanalysis).
Also, to be clear, these models are not the AI LLMs that most people are familiar with. They are machine learning algorithms trained on observations (actually reanalysis).
I might suggest "computer god" for the science fiction stuff
i think we should separate the terms:
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
part of the reason i am genuinely irritated with the gAI/AGI cult is because there is real societal benefits in using ML techniques in medical care + weather analysis, and instead people get annoyed with anything that gets lumped in with the plagiarism machine
November 30, 2025 at 7:35 AM
I might suggest "computer god" for the science fiction stuff
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
i think we should separate the terms:
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
part of the reason i am genuinely irritated with the gAI/AGI cult is because there is real societal benefits in using ML techniques in medical care + weather analysis, and instead people get annoyed with anything that gets lumped in with the plagiarism machine
November 29, 2025 at 6:13 PM
i think we should separate the terms:
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Yes, this!
Muddling them all up together allows people to go, “but AI is definitively and provably useful” and point to ML, adding “and look what it might be able to do” while pointing at AI, all as an attempt to get us to use LLMs, which are environment-killing, work-and-data-thieving, bots.
Muddling them all up together allows people to go, “but AI is definitively and provably useful” and point to ML, adding “and look what it might be able to do” while pointing at AI, all as an attempt to get us to use LLMs, which are environment-killing, work-and-data-thieving, bots.
i think we should separate the terms:
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
AI: science fiction stuff
Machine Learning: niche useful stuff done by scientists
LLM: obsequious chatbots built on mass scraping Reddit threads
part of the reason i am genuinely irritated with the gAI/AGI cult is because there is real societal benefits in using ML techniques in medical care + weather analysis, and instead people get annoyed with anything that gets lumped in with the plagiarism machine
November 30, 2025 at 4:44 AM
Yes, this!
Muddling them all up together allows people to go, “but AI is definitively and provably useful” and point to ML, adding “and look what it might be able to do” while pointing at AI, all as an attempt to get us to use LLMs, which are environment-killing, work-and-data-thieving, bots.
Muddling them all up together allows people to go, “but AI is definitively and provably useful” and point to ML, adding “and look what it might be able to do” while pointing at AI, all as an attempt to get us to use LLMs, which are environment-killing, work-and-data-thieving, bots.
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
As an aside, one of the great things about the coyote/roadrunner cartoons is how they observe strictly all the unities of classical theater—character, place, time, action, and monopolistic vertically integrated supplier of goods.
Woman Realizes Adorable Rescue Is A Coyote Pup After It Orders Dynamite Detonator Off The Internet
November 29, 2025 at 3:30 PM
As an aside, one of the great things about the coyote/roadrunner cartoons is how they observe strictly all the unities of classical theater—character, place, time, action, and monopolistic vertically integrated supplier of goods.
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Intentionally getting captchas wrong so I can make a Waymo crash.
some captchas are particularly humiliating
is the fact that I’m searching for “elphaba sex cardigan” not proof enough that I’m not a robot for you, google
do I also have to click on two pictures of a bus
is the fact that I’m searching for “elphaba sex cardigan” not proof enough that I’m not a robot for you, google
do I also have to click on two pictures of a bus
November 30, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Intentionally getting captchas wrong so I can make a Waymo crash.
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
putting every military in the world on high alert by throwing an extraordinarily large pizza party at the domino's closest to the pentagon
November 30, 2025 at 4:18 AM
putting every military in the world on high alert by throwing an extraordinarily large pizza party at the domino's closest to the pentagon
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
isn't it just so weird how the points of difference this kind of person expects you to accept are never things like "how best can we ensure that every human being is adequately housed and fed?" and always things like "are trans people human?"
There is an extraordinary sense of entitlement behind the belief that there ought to be political party that aligns 100% with your own opinions.
November 30, 2025 at 4:47 AM
isn't it just so weird how the points of difference this kind of person expects you to accept are never things like "how best can we ensure that every human being is adequately housed and fed?" and always things like "are trans people human?"
Reposted by resting witch face 😷
There are two genders.
November 30, 2025 at 6:56 AM
There are two genders.